fatal flaw

I'm reading Michael Schwartz's article over at TomDispatch, The Iraqi Oil Conundrum, and I have to say, I have a few quibbles.

But that is what you are in for here, isn't it? Quibbling.

Firstly, if this was their dream, and it seems to have been, much of this is nonsense:

The dream in those distant days was to strip OPEC -- the cartel consisting of the planet’s main petroleum exporters -- of the power to control the oil supply and its price on the world market. As a reward for vastly expanding Iraqi production and freeing its distribution from OPEC’s control, key figures in the Bush administration imagined that the U.S. could skim off a small proportion of that increased oil production to offset the projected $40 billion cost of the invasion and occupation of the country.

Let's first note just how tightly coupled are Saudi Arabia, OPEC, Big Oil, and the US Dollar. This dynamic was set forth in 1971 when Nixon finally, unilaterally, and for the first time the American history, defaulted on international debt, detached the US dollar from the final tether to the gold standard, and declared that the US dollar would thenceforth be a fiat currency, whose value would entirely depend upon consumption. This would be a currency that would be propped up by Saudi Arabia, and by extension, OPEC, by trading oil only in US dollars.

No one imagined how badly that deal would go. For everyone.

The fatal flaw of the neocon moronity is its failure to recognize the world as an extremely complex parameter space that would deflect any singularly militarized geopolitical vector; the pointy end of the stick, if you will. That pointy end cannot be maintained if the world revolts. And they are doing so now.

There are any number of ways of doing this, most of which imagine destroying the US economy. Many current targets of US foreign policy are also capable of doing this. The friction is everywhere: Ukraine, where the NED-backed Orange Revolution has been turned backed, Obama administration's bizarre insistence on pissing off China, merely one of the economic forces capable of rendering the US a third world nation.

It's at this point that I lose my shit over how dumb Michael Schwartz might actually be:

Speculation that Iraq’s production could -- in the not too distant future -- exceed that of Saudi Arabia may still represent Washington’s main strategy for postponing future severe global energy shortages.

Is he fucking kidding? Hello? Michael Schwartz, are you with us on this earth?

Seriously, I hope this is joke. A neocon joke, maybe. But nothing any normal person would understand.

I remember quite distinctly, when George W. Bush made a remark that Iraq would produce 5 million bbl of oil per day, and the Big Oil PR jobbers were on the mark, trying to "diffuse the situation," indicating that Bush really didn't know what he was talking about.

And he didn't. Big Oil and OPEC are perfectly in tune. They do not want to upset the cart. They are willing to take a few hits, but those heal. Hell, Big Oil, the Sauds and China are partnering up. It's one helluva freaking party.

This is what spit-comb, neocon, war-mongering dipshits like Paul War Criminal Wolfowitz did not seem to understand: the tied arrays of US foreign policy, monetary policy, and domestic policy. There is a history there that you might well have bothered to understand, you ignorant boob. Why aren't you in jail? Yeah, we know why.

Meanwhile, back to the main issue, no one can bring down the US economy without great harm to themselves. Hence, the trepidation in bringing the United States down. It's going to hurt. No one doubts that.

But the forces are building. It is apparent everyday. The friction about everything the United States does on the international stage is growing.

How long before they pull the plug?