War in Iraq is based on interests, not values
COMMENTARY
Josh McDonald

Will Brown, whose piece “Rational thought still popular on campus” in the April 15 issue of the Skiff commended TCU for welcoming Robert Jensen and his decidedly unpopular message, ought himself be commended for engaging with a view he does not personally support.

Brown’s own opinion, however, should not draw equal cheers. While this campus’ cup certainly runneth over with conservative political positions and support for the president, that makes it no more an enclave of rational thought than Bush’s malapropisms make the White House a grammar school.

Brown compares the current administration’s war with Iraq to when former President Clinton “got the U.S. military involved in the affairs of Kosovo and Somalia.” He argues that Bush’s intentions are honorable, motivated not by a desire for further control over oil resources but by a humanitarian concern for Iraqi suffering and democratic values.
The dissimilarities, though, are too great to ignore. Kosovo and Somalia do not sit on vast, untapped reserves of one of the world’s most precious natural resources. Our role in humanitarian aid and peacekeeping in those situations wasn’t widely opposed abroad, as is the case now. Certainly there are other places in the world today where dictatorships rob people of basic human rights, but their plights warrant no mention in Washington. While the war with Iraq isn’t entirely motivated by the thirst for oil, rational citizens from around the world recognize that it isn’t entirely serendipitous either.

They note the disproportionate number of oil executives who hold prominent posts in the Bush administration, particularly Dick Cheney, current vice president. They note the fact that a new government in Iraq will open up access for oil contracts to British and American firms from which they were previously shut out. And they also note the foreign policy strategy of Bush administration theorists, who believe that control of Middle East oil reserves is key to maintaining U.S. prominence in world affairs.

Even fewer global citizens recognize that oil played a part in the war with Afghanistan.

The woefully underreported Trans-Afghan Pipeline project, which couldn’t be undertaken until the Taliban was ousted, further draws into question the “honorable” motives of the Bush administration. The fact that Hamid Karzai, the current U.S.-appointed president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s special envoy, both have connections to UNOCAL, the firm once tapped to build the pipeline, only adds to international suspicion.

Luckily, though, for Brown and other Bush supporters here, TCU harbors very few dissenters. Nevertheless, the lack of support for critical ideas doesn’t make them wrong, just unpopular. At the least, Bush supporters ought to admit that, given the evidence above, the administration’s motives are less than pure. The unfortunate upshot of these ideas is that our government far too often conducts foreign policy not based on our values, as it claims, but on our interests instead. In the end it is this fact that results in our leaders looking less than honorable.

Josh McDonald is a senior English and philosophy major from Garland. He can be reached at (j.r.mcdonald@tcu.edu).