Oil War III

(This is old. It was a speech I gave right before the war.)

Truth, it is often rightly said, is the first casualty of war. The United States became deeply committed in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which American ships deliberately entered North Vietnamese waters to provoke an attack. The U.S. government lied about this incident, saying that the attack was unprovoked, in order to line up public sentiment in favor of the war.

Now once again truth is becoming a casualty of war. The main reason why George W. Bush wants to attack and hold Iraq is not the alleged military threat from Saddam Hussein, nor any real sympathy for the Iraqi people, but the desire to control Iraqi oil fields. Our domestic supply of crude oil is nearly gone, and we are now entering the end game where nations war over the last oil supplies in the world. A large fraction of the what's left lies deep in the bedrock of Iraq. That's the primary reason for this war—and the probable cause of still more wars yet to come. For this is not the first or even the second time the United States has gone to war over oil. This is Oil War III.

The first oil war began at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attacked in response to a total oil embargo imposed by the Americans, Dutch and British, who at that time controlled international oil production. Hoping to check Japan's push through China, the U.S. and Great Britain cut off Japan's oil supply in August of 1941. Four months later Japan struck back, aiming to destroy the America's Pacific fleet, so as to seize reliable oil supplies in Indonesia. That was Oil War I. We were heroes in that war, drawn in by our efforts to deprive an aggressive power of the oil it needed for conquest.

Twelve years ago the United States entered Oil War II. That war, too, seemed just—at least on the surface: Kuwait was attacked without provocation and we came to its aid. But the United States did not enter the war for altruistic reasons. It was our oil supply that was threatened—and we were defending what we took to be our own interests.

Now we're facing Oil War III. Our addiction to oil is deeper today than it was twelve years ago—so deep that we are now desperate enough to initiate the violence. Today we are the would-be conquerors who aim to seize the Iraqi oil fields and hold them by military occupation. It is true that Saddam Hussein should be disarmed, but that is a job for the international community. He has never attacked us; and it would be suicidal of him to try. It is true that he is a bloody and repressive dictator. But we tolerate and even encourage such dictators elsewhere. Disarmament and liberation are Bush's smokescreens. The primary goal in this war is control of Iraqi oil.

We demand Iraqi oil because we're running out of our own. And we don't think we can do without, because we're addicted. I mean that literally. America is addicted to oil—the black drug. Addictions have four stages: experimentation, the honeymoon, full addiction, and decline. We have recently entered the fourth.

There was, first, the stage of experimentation, which began at the end of the 19th century when we started to use oil to power our automobiles. As with many drugs, there was some initial discomfort. Early cars were noisy and dangerous. They emitted noxious fumes. On winding roads they made some people nauseous. But these were mere annoyances, like the problem of sticking a needle in your vein, and we soon found ways of accommodating ourselves. And the black drug had other uses, too * plastics and pesticides and a million consumer conveniences.

So we entered the honeymoon stage * the rise of the chemical industries, the paving of roads, the building of gas stations, the euphoric romance of speed and style. It felt good to be out there breezing along the highway and the automobile could take us anywhere. Oil, our servant, satisfied our desires.

But beneath our notice those desires turned to needs. Imperceptibly at first, we began to shape our lives and our culture around petroleum-based chemicals and petroleum-powered cars, just as a drug addict shapes his life around the drug. The car changed the landscape of America. Suburbs mushroomed around cities. Communities disappeared, to be replaced by collections of isolated one-family units. Neighborhood stores closed their doors and it became impossible to obtain the simplest necessities without driving somewhere. Asphalt proliferated. It wasn't enough; the centers of cities were choked off as we paved the countryside to create drive-ins and shopping malls. Public transportation was deliberately curtailed or eliminated. The railroads withered.

Oil also fired growth in the chemical and plastics industries; farms adopted arsenals of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Rivers, streams, roadsides and beaches were littered with indestructible plastic.

Like any drug user, we struggled to maintain the illusion of control but now that illusion was beginning to crack. It was hard to hide, even from ourselves, that we were addicted. We had ceased to be masters of oil and had become instead its slaves.

And now we have entered the final stage of addiction, the nightmarish one, where the drug's full destructive effects are unveiled. We're so thoroughly addicted that we can hardly conceive of life without oil. But the black drug is ruining our health. You can smell the sickness in the air of cities. You can hear it in the ceaseless, omnipresent rumble of traffic. You can feel it in the wind, which year by year becomes hotter and more violent. You can see it in the endless streams of poison-spewing vehicles creeping along the highways, in the dying trees of the Appalachian mountains, in the unnatural glow of the nighttime sky.

And so today we stand at the threshold of Oil War III, a war aimed at fueling our addiction. If we win this war (as we certainly will), we lose. For then, like the addict who has made a big score, we will have for a little longer, a cheap and plentiful supply of the drug that is ruining our health.

To addiction there is only one solution. Stop taking the drug. Twenty-five years ago Jimmy Carter tried to set this country on the road to energy independence. We chose oil addiction instead. Now that addiction is leading us to violence—to Oil War III. This war and future wars like it are predictable and inevitable so long as our desperate addiction continues. The way to peace is clear—and it is also the way to health: wean ourselves from the black drug. End our addiction to oil.