I was in the middle of an Australian speaking tour when Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait and sparked the chain of events that has brought us to the brink of war in the Middle East. I stayed up very late one night to hear President Bush speak live to the American people in his first speech after the crisis began.
During the hour before his address, the television station aired a documentary on the environment, specifically the growing dangers to the earth's ecosystem from global warming trends and pollution caused by the industrial world's massive dependence on fossil fuels -- i.e., oil. Then I watched George Bush tell the American people that we must be prepared to go to war to protect the supply of oil. Nothing less was at stake, said the president, than "our way of life."
It was a very vivid and frightening picture I saw, in the middle of the night and halfway around the world, of my own addicted nation -- addicted to a way of life that is slowly killing us. In all the coverage and commentary about this crisis over oil, few have asked the most important question: What does the oil fuel?
What the oil fuels is a global economic system of massive consumption at the top and massive misery at the bottom -- which we now know is doing incalculable damage to the very natural order with which we live. Consuming a grossly disproportionate share of the world's resources, the West suffocates in its own affluence while desperately worrying now about the price we may have to pay to keep the oil flowing.
The world economic order is not only unjust, it is also unstable, as the present crisis graphically demonstrates. The truth is that the West has itself helped to create the situation in which we now find ourselves.
Western colonialism and the thirst for oil drew up the map of the Middle East, to the point even of carving out the borders of all the Arab states embroiled in the present conflict. Nations such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were virtually established to assure a continual supply of cheap oil to the West. The United States and the industrialized world therefore share responsibility for oil-rich states run by corrupt and brutal elites who abandon their own people, crush all opposition, fight among themselves for wealth and power, live in incredible opulence, and invest their untold fortunes in the West, while Arab masses live in poverty and resentment. The feudal oil sheiks have proven quite willing to cut favorable political deals with their Western benefactors (remember where some of the contra aid came from) -- to the humiliation of Arab pride, the inciting of Arab nationalism, and the continual postponement of self-determination for the Palestinian people.
The West arms all the Middle East States (and has thus flooded the entire region with sophisticated weaponry), plays them off against one another, generally ignores their human rights abuses (including Iraq's many past horrors), changes alliances as quickly as shifting desert sands, and seeks to manage events with absolutely no consistent principle except its insatiable thirst for oil.
IRAQ'S INVASION of Kuwait was an act of aggression that reflects the character of a regime and dictator notorious for brutality. While Kuwait's elite rulers made a quick getaway, their people now suffer the merciless violence of Saddam Hussein, as have many others before them -- including Iraq's Kurdish minority; all domestic opposition to Saddam's absolutist authority; Iranian soldiers who, like the Kurds, were victims of deadly chemical weapons; and even the ruthless leader's most loyal supporters when they fell out of disfavor (these, reportedly, have been personally executed by Saddam himself). Saddam's use of Western civilian hostages as shields around military targets during the current crisis is not only indefensible but again reveals his moral corruption and cruel opportunism.
There is no question that Saddam Hussein's aggression must be opposed. The only question is how -- knowing that the ways we choose are setting critical precedents for the emerging shape of the new post-Cold War era.
The quick and decisive response from the world community provided some concrete hope in the early days of the conflict. The U.N. Security Council's unprecedented and unanimous action to impose immediate and far-reaching economic sanctions against Iraq showed uncharacteristic resolve. The strength and unity of the international economic boycott and worldwide diplomatic pressure directed against Saddam Hussein have promised new possibilities for dealing with military aggression in the post-Cold War era. For the first time since the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union stood together in opposing a deplorable action dangerous to the entire world, with neither superpower protecting ideological interests by exercising its veto in the Security Council.
But the massive American military buildup in the Gulf decisively escalated the conflict and opened the door to the growing prospect of ever more dangerous and tragic consequences. In failing to give genuinely multilateral and non-military responses the necessary time to work, the United States has, in fact, undermined those crucial efforts.
The huge American-led mobilization has enabled Saddam, a very secular thug, to cleverly transform himself into the champion of Arab pride, nationalism, and religious restoration; and it is changing the perception of the crisis -- in the minds and hearts of a growing number of Arabs -- from an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait into a moral struggle, even a holy war, with the Western powers. The preemptive and unilateral military action of the United States has perilously transformed the crisis into a showdown between Saddam Hussein and George Bush -- and even more ominously, into a confrontation between wounded Arab pride and the "New Crusaders" (as Saddam characterizes the U.S. forces).
A unified international economic boycott and the diplomatic isolation of Iraq can work -- and are already becoming effective -- and must be given the chance to create the possibility of political and peaceful solutions to this very dangerous crisis. Such multilateral actions, led and enforced by the United Nations, with strong support from most Arab nations, present a very different symbol and reality than an impending confrontation with powerful Americans on holy soil. The threat of such a clash fuels the deepest resentments, frustrations, and anger that have arisen from a long and painful history of Arab humiliations at Western hands.
The fact that other Western allies and moderate Arab states are also involved does not change the obvious reality of who is in charge and making the decisions. Newsweek reported the U.S. efforts to rally multilateral support for its military operation, then concluded, "But there was no doubt in Bush's mind about who would be in charge: the world's superpower reborn, the United States."
THE U.S. CLAIM TO BE RESISTING the principle of "might makes right" is full of contradictions in the Middle East, where Washington gave the green light for Israel's invasion of Lebanon, subsidizes Israel's 23-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and acquiesces in the face of increasing oppression of the Palestinians. Similarly, the U.S. commitment to restore a Kuwaiti royal family that has suppressed every democratic impulse in that country -- and to defend a Saudi monarchy with one of the more dismal human rights records in the world -- suggests that we are making the world safe more for feudalism and gas guzzling than for democracy.
The moral authority of U.S. concern when "big nations push around little nations" has a hollow ring in the ears of a world with recent memories of Panama, Grenada, and Nicaragua. As for saving the world from "tyrants," how many brutal dictators (Marcos, Somoza, Pinochet, Noriega) as bad or worse than Saddam Hussein have been close U.S. allies over the past several decades?
There are other consequences to the massive American military buildup. The United States has unequivocally established itself as the pre-eminent world military power in the post-Cold War era. For the United States to solely assume the role of policing the world raises grave concerns for the world's poor majority -- as well as disturbing questions as to whose agenda will be enforced. The military capability needed to project such a role to potential trouble spots all over the world requires a level of military expenditure that will snuff out the opportunity for a change in U.S. national priorities.
In petty but dangerous regional tyrants -- such as Saddam Hussein -- who threaten the American agenda, the United States has found the new enemies upon which the ideological rationale for continued militarism depends. The "peace dividend" has just set sail for the Middle East.
The alternative was glimpsed at the outset of the present crisis when the world community took decisive and concerted action. The move away from bipolar super-power politics and unilateral interventions is both urgent and extremely difficult. It won't yield quick solutions. But the consequences of a world made safe only by U.S. hegemony are even more dangerous.
We must call for the withdrawal of both the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and the U.S.-led forces in Saudi Arabia, perhaps replacing them temporarily with a regional or U.N.-coordinated peace-keeping presence to act as a buffer against flash points until political solutions can be reached. Either we take the new and difficult road of multilateral and non-military solutions to the inevitable conflicts between nations; or we continue the old cycle of unilateral intervention and retaliation, leading only to political dead ends and endless human suffering.
CLEARLY, WHAT THE United States cares most about in this crisis is oil. The United States is willing to pay a high price to secure continued access to oil on our terms -- which is what our alliance with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other cooperative oil-producing states is all about -- and what legitimate Arab anger with them is all about.
That price may now include many dead young soldiers on all sides, the prospect of high civilian casualties, the potential of chemical warfare, and even the possibility of tactical nuclear weapons being used. That price for oil is far too high.
The image of President Bush ordering troops to the Middle East by phone from his golf cart in Kennebunkport, Maine, sets a chilling tone of unwillingness to have vacations or lifestyles interrupted even while young Americans are sent off, perhaps to die, in the Gulf conflict. The genuine fear and concern of many over the prospect of losing loved ones in the sands of the Arabian peninsula are caused by something far deeper than a madman in Iraq; they are the direct consequence of "reaping what we have sown." Regardless of how the present crisis is resolved, it must become an event which changes us.
"The bugle from the Middle East," wrote columnist Ellen Goodman, "sounds an unhappy wake-up call." We are confronted with soul-searching questions that simply will not go away. What are we most willing to sacrifice -- an "endless" supply of cheap oil, or the lives of the young Americans and Arab people it may take to keep it flowing? How many cents on a gallon of gas are worth the cost of so many deaths? What are we ready to risk -- changes in our lifestyle, or the prospect of endless war and inevitable conflagration, perhaps involving chemical and nuclear weapons?
Are we finally ready to make the critical choices to opt for energy conservation and the shift to safer, more reliable, and renewable sources of fuel for the sake of the earth and our children? Or are we prepared to bomb the children of Baghdad, if necessary, to protect "our oil"?
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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