*THE OIL DIMENSION*

*THE VIETNAM PARALLEL*

*THE VIEW FROM MY HOTEL ROOM*

One of the perks of staying in a fancy hotel is access to a wide range of international channels and a chance to get exposed to more perspectives than one usually gets.

Here in Jakarta, I have been following the build-up to war in Iraq on CNN, BBC, French TV, German TV and Asia news channels. Sure there is the same news of the Bush push, but there are also reports on the massive protest in London against the war, the arrests of global justice protesters at the World Bank meetings in Washington, and interviews with skeptics and critics. I watched Deutshe Welle’s conversation with the new Parliamentary chief of the victorious Social Democrats in Germany explain why his country is not backing the war in the wings.

THE OIL WAR

Here in Jakarta, the Post relies on Reuters reports of Iraq’s rejection of the Washington-London resolution, designed to make a showdown more likely. But then you come across an Australian newspaper with an angle that seems to be missing in most US news accounts. Here’s Paul McGeough in the The Sydney Morning Herald

“Contempt rises to the surface. Over glasses of sugared tea, two of this desert city’s leading businessmen are stung by news from Washington that Saudis entering the United States are to be subjected to the indignity ofbeing fingerprinted.

Abdulrahman Al-Zamil, his leg twitching nervously in the folds of his white robes, spits out his words: “America should ask the British about the history of Iraq.” His colleague Khalid Al-Turki rejoins: “The justifications for a US attack on Iraq is not only to get rid of weapons ofmass destruction. They also want to control the oilfields, so that no more will they have to rely on the Wahabi-dominated crazies of Saudi Arabia.”

The exchange, as the fading autumn light made filigree of Riyadh’s stark, modernistic skyline, was more than just a Saddam-inspired rant.

As George Bush prepares for war against Iraq, he has spoken only of disarming Saddam Hussein and of liberating his people. But if his battle plans are viewed in the context of some of Washington’s ambiguous andcontradictory adventures in the wake of September 11, one of the most coherent strands in today’s US foreign policy is oil. Consider.Washington’s war talk is what is pushing oil prices to about $US30 ($55) a barrel - an increase of 45 per cent in a year, of which analysts say that anywhere between $US5-$10 is a “war premium”. But that didn’t stop the US Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham, from getting his dukes up with OPEC oilministers at a conference in Osaka last Saturday:

“We aren’t going to beg for oil. Producers have their way of looking at things and the US has to do that as well.”

And that is what Washington has been doing.

THE VIETNAM PARALLEL:PAST IS PROLOGUE

In my email are a blizzard of other articles including one by Derrick Z Jackson of the Boston Globe who references the late Jim Thompson, the curator at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in the year I was privileged to hang out there. Published on Friday, September 27, 2002 in the Boston Globe. Jackson compares Iraq to Vietnam as all of us who were conscious then also tend to do.

“HIS TELEGRAPHED war on Iraq belongs on a Cineplex trailer.”An obedient son, mopping the floor for his father (1991 clip of fleeing remnants of theRepublican Guard) … a defense secretary trying to annihilate the 1960s (clip of Kent State) … a secretary of state frozen out in a Cabinet Cold War (clip of a black man being passed by taxi cabs) … a vice president who has not been seen since the Florida recount (clip of an empty chair) … a security adviser who could scare Cleopatra Jones out of her Afro(blaxploitation clip of Jones gunning down criminals).

“Four men. One woman. Five visions. Brash. Bellicose. Blind with ambition. Bound by theirhatred of the Axis of Evil. Their mission: to drive a madman away from critical oil supplies for sport utility vehicles. Which one of them will go mad first?

“Coming on Christmas Day: `Regime Change.’ Directed by MartinScorcheasy. Special effects by George Nukas. Special rap by JA Rule (John Ashcroft). Special reunion soundtrack of Michael Jackson and the all-star cast who sang to end famine in Ethiopia in 1985: `I am the world, Who needsthe UN? I am the one to make a brighter day, so let’s bomb Baghdad.’

Starring George W.W. (World War) Bush. Co-starring Donald ‘’Weapons ofMass Destruction'’ Rumsfeld. His credible evidence is so incredible no one gives it credibility; costarring Colin ‘’Reluctant First Striker'’ Powell and Dick Cheney. He’ll kick your posterior - if you can find him; And introducing Condoleezza Rice. Never tell her you will do nothing.'’

One person who might not have given this flick four stars wasJames Thomson. Thomson, who died this summer at the age of 70, was the curator for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University from1972 to 1984. In the 1960s, Thomson was an Asian foreign policy adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Thomson was noteworthy for being an early dissenter from President Johnson’s mass destruction in Vietnam andfor wanting better relations with China. Thomson quit in 1966.

Two years later, Thomson wrote How Could Vietnam Happen? in the Atlantic Monthly. Much of that essay, which won an Overseas Press Club award, applies to the push by President Bush to mount an attack Iraq.

“The key here is domestic politics; the need to sell the American people, press, and Congress on support for an unpopular and costly war in which the objectives themselves have been in flux,” Thomson wrote.

“Once you have said that the American Experiment itself stands or falls on the Vietnam outcome, you have thereby created a national stake far beyond any other stakes. Crucial throughout the process of Vietnam decisionmaking was a conviction among many policy makers that Vietnam posed afundamental test of America’s national will… These are not men who can be asked to extricate themselves from error. “There is a final result of Vietnam policy,” he wrote, that “holds potential danger for the future of American foreign policy: the rise of a new breed of American ideologues who see Vietnam as the ultimate test of their new doctrine. I have in mindthose men in Washington who have given a new life to the missionary impulse in American foreign relations, who believe that this nation, in this era, has received a threefold endowment that can transform the world. As theysee it, that endowment is composed of, first, our unsurpassed militarymight, second, our clear technological supremacy, and third, our allegedly invincible benevolence (our `altruism,’ our affluence, our lack of territorial aspirations). “Together, it is argued, this threefold endowment provides us with the opportunity and the obligation to ease the nations of the earth toward modernization and stability, toward a full-fledged Pax Americana Technocratica. In reaching for this goal, Vietnam is viewed as the last and crucial test. Once we have succeeded there, the road ahead is clear.”

Today, Bush tells us that Iraq is the crucial test. With a sagging economy and surrounded by ideologues, he is succumbing to the missionary impulse. If he cannot get Osama bin Laden’s devil horns to hang over his mantle, Saddam Hussein’s will do just fine, even though Hussein, regardless of his own evils, has not been tied to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

I Barely Remember Suharto”

In the email, Bakti writes from Salt Lake City: “I’m not even sure the CNN-ABC merger made it into the local papers. Boy, do I appreciate your stories from Indonesia. I barely remembered there was a Suharto. Despite the brilliance of my mind and political leanings, I’m SO ignorant of so many things, it embarrasses me. Thank you over and over Danny, for bringing your personal perspective and eye witness accounts to us daily. It matters.

NEW WEBSITE

From Mark Crispin Miller: Please ask all of your friends to review a new web site created by and for Gulf War veterans who have serious questions about the proposed plan to re-invade Iraq.

www.veteransforcommonsense.org

The experienced views of Gulf War veterans have been sidelined in the media in favor of Pentagon insiders and military hawks, most of whom have never spent time in combat, especially in Iraq.

The new web site offers a credible, mainstream alternative.”

Al Ahram in Egypt picked up one of my weblog columns for their weekly edition. This is a fascinating source of opinion from all over the world. Check it out.

I will keep writing when I can, between shoots and when the Business Center in the hotel has a free machine. Keep in touch by writing: danny@mediachannel.org