This was taken from the website of my favourite lyricist and
poet. Feel free to send me your comments:
Understanding Oil
By Serj Tankian
The brutal attacks/bombings this week in New York, and Washington
D.C., along with threats of attacks there and elsewhere in the
country have changed our times forever. While the mass media
concentrates on the details of the destruction, and the blanketed
words of politicians, I will attempt to understand and explain the
events from the fence. BOMBING AND BEING BOMBED ARE THE SAME THINGS
ON DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE FENCE.
Terror is not a spontaneous human action without credence. People
just dont hijack planes and commit harikari (suicide) without any
weight of thought to the action. No one in the media seems to ask
WHY DID THESE PEOPLE DO THIS HORRIFIC ACT OF VIOLENCE AND
DESTRUCTION?
To be able to understand the answer to this, we must first look at
our U.S. Mideast Policy. During most of the 20th century, U.S.
businesses have worked on attaining oil rights and concessions from
countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. After WWI, secret
back door deals by our State Dept. yielded oil rights from then
defeated Turkey to fields in what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in
return for looking the other way at a crime against humanity, the
Genocide of the Armenians by the Turks. Oil profits have been the
motivating factors behind many attempts at counterinsurgency of
democratic regimes by the CIA and the U.S in the Middle East (such
as Iran in the 1950s, where the Shah replaced the Prime Minister
who refused to give up oil rights to the U.S., and since the people
couldnt deal with the Shah, an extremist government headed by the
Ayatollah Khomeini ultimately prevailed). During the Iran-Iraq war,
America supplied both sides with weapons and advice. These are not
the actions of a rich superpower wanting peace. Lets not forget
that Saddam Hussein, before being Americas vision of the
Anti-Christ, was a close ally of the U.S., and the CIA. So what was
the firm belief system of consecutive American administrations that
caused all this to occur ? PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST WILL LEAD TO
HIGHER OIL AND GASOLINE PRICES. Lets not also forget the power of
the Arms industry, disguised as defense, that still sells billions
of dollars of weapons to the area. Therefore it has not been in the
short-term economic interest of the U.S. to foster Peace in the
Middle East. Using the above reasoning, the U.S. has encouraged
extremist governments, toppled democracies, as in the case of Iran
to replace it with a monarchy, rigged elections, and many more
unspeakable political crimes for U.S. businesses abroad. Lets not
also forget the Red Scare. During the war between the then Soviet
Union and Afghanistan, the U.S. armed and supported the Taliban, a
fundamentalist Muslim organization, and allowed them to export
opium and heroin out of their country to pay for those weapons.
Therefore the Taliban rose to power and control with the help of
the U.S.A. Today, the bombing of Iraq still continues, no longer
covered by the media, the economic embargo still remains, killing
millions of children, and recently, while the world and the U.N.
General Assembly have cried out to bring in peacekeeping forces
into Israel and Palestine, to end the escalated war and recent
assassinations, the U.S. has vetoed the rest of the Security
Council and has halted the possibility of peace, there, in the most
volatile place in the world.
People in Serbia, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan to name a
few have seen bombs fall, not always at military targets and kill
innocent civilians, as the scene in New York city yesterday. The
wars waged by our government in our names has landed smack in the
middle of our living room. The half hour of destruction closed down
all world financial markets, struck the central headquarters of our
military, and had our leaders running into bunkers, and our
citizens into fear and frenzy. What scares me more than what has
occurred is what our reactions to the occurrences may cause.
President Bush belongs to a long generation of Republican
Presidents who love war economies. The media has only concentrated
on the bombings, if you will, and what type of retaliations are
looming for the perpetrators. What everyone fails to realize is
that the bombings are a reaction to existing injustices around the
world, generally unseen to most Americans. To react to a reaction
would be to further sponsor the reaction. In other words, my belief
is that the terror will multiply if concrete steps are not taken to
sponsor peace in the middle east, NOW. This does not mean that we
should not find the guilty party(s), Bin Laden, or whoever they may
be, and not try them. Put simply, as long as a major injustice
remains, violence precipitates to the surface of life.
Native American folklore, the Bible, Nostradamus, and many other
major religious beliefs point to this era with the visuals of
yesterdays disasters, and conditions of ecological disasters we
experience daily in our lives today. War, rumors of war, famine,
long burning fires, etc., are at our doorstep. We can prevail over
this possible vision with the power of the human spirit,
understanding, compassion, and peace. ITS TIME TO PUT OUR NEEDS
FOR SECURITY AND SURVIVAL, ACHIEVED ONLY THROUGH PEACE, ABOVE AND
BEYOND PROFITS, ESPECIALLY IN THESE TIMES.
SOLUTION:
The U.S. should stop sidestepping the U.N. Security Council, and
allow U.N. Peacekeeping troops and missions to the Middle East.
Stop the violence first.
Stop the bombing and patrol of Iraq.
With todays gains in the use of alternative fuels, develop them to
full usage with autos and other utilities, to make the country less
dependant on an already depleting natural reserve, oil.
By initiating peace, we would have already shaken the foundations
of support for Bin Laden, and/or all those that sponsor activities
like those we saw yesterday, and break the stronghold of extremists
on the world of Islam. On the other hand, if we carry out bombings
on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very
likely kill innocent civilians along the way, wed be creating many
more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the
retaliation. As shown from yesterdays events, you cannot stop a
person whos ready to die.