A Dream for a Better World

According to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials, the framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn’t the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime.  The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations.  The five lawyers, who called themselves the ‘War Council’, drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone from being held accountable for activities that at other times have bee considered war crimes.  The quintet of lawyers were David Addington, the longtime legal adviser and now chief of staff to Cheney; Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel and then the attorney general; William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel; former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, and Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales.

Four years – and seven investigations – after her son’s death in Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident, Mary Tillman remains frustrated that the people responsible for covering up the circumstances of his demise have not been held accountable.  Tillman’s son, Pat Tillman, was the professional football player turned soldier who left a $3.6 million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals on the table to enlist in the military and fight al Qaeda in June 2002. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Two weeks later, just before his nationally televised memorial service, the Pentagon awarded him the Silver Star.  He died, the military said, while charging up a hill toward the enemy.  But that wasn’t the real story. Tillman was killed by his own men.  The military knew that within hours but waited five weeks before revealing it.  Years later, Mary Tillman is still looking for answers.

The types of war-for-oil conflicts that we will likely see are as follows:

There may be conflicts between oil-importing nations and oil-exporting nations when a powerful oil-importing nation deems an oil-exporting nation to have an “unacceptable” political regime.  For examples, the current conflicts in Iraq and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan.  Iran and Venezuela are potential targets for future US oil wars. Note the never-ending US rhetoric against both countries. 

Conflicts between consuming nations are a great possibility.  Using their large piles of US dollars, China has been locking up long-term oil contracts in Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, interestingly, has given almost all of their recent long-term oil contracts to China rather than the US. As you can imagine, this has bothered some US-based oil companies.

Civil wars will occur within oil-producing nations to gain control of power and resources. This was the case in Venezuela several years ago and more recently in Nigeria and Iraq. It is increasingly likely to occur in other Middle Eastern nations in the future, as the totalitarian governments supported by the West (in exchange for favorable treatment on oil supplies) begin to lose control over those they rule.

Has the war on drugs cause Afghanistan’s massive, illicit drug trade?  Some people seem to think so.  The war on drugs purportedly funds the insurgency, corrupts the government and destabilizes society.  The president of Afghanistan has reportedly said that Afghanistan’s illicit drug trade, not the Taliban, is the single greatest threat the country faces.  Afghanistan supplies approximately 93% of the world’s illicit opium.  This failure has many causes but supposedly a key one is the simple fact that the primary source of information about the drug trade is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  The organization releases a World Drug Report annually but to some critics, the report is primarily an instrument of propaganda.  Its purpose is to praise the status quo, bury evidence of failure, and frame the discussion so serious scrutiny of the War on Drugs never happens.