Osama Bin Laden’s recent offer of a truce fires
the imagination and prompts U.S. anti-war advocates to sit up, cross
fingers and envision the moment when American troops sling arms, shake
hands with their Iraqi and Afghan combatants and come home.
It sounds so simple. They quit bombing our people, and
we quit bombing theirs. Hold a series of peace talks for the record,
declare a victory and pull out. That is, after all, what we did to
extricate ourselves from the quagmire of Vietnam.
It sounds simple, but the situation in the Middle East
is different from Vietnam in one very important and exigent way. For
the powerful people driving U.S. foreign policy, the end game, the
prize, the brass ring is not peace. It is not even democracy in the
Middle East. Simply stated, a truce with Bin Laden does nothing to
advance U.S. interests. Sure, the killing might stop, but America’s
geo-strategic goals would not be reached. To understand this notion
more fully, take a peek into history.
The situation between Spain and the U.S. that led to
the Spanish/American War in the late nineteenth century is analogous
to U.S. objectives in Middle East in the twenty-first century.
In 1898, when facing the threat of war with America,
Spain, then a weakened and corrupt empire, agreed to American demands
to free Cuba, enact land reform, establish a representative government,
etc. President McKinley, the author of the demands, had been surprised
and chagrinned by Spain’s quick compliance. Beyond protecting
American industrial investments in Cuba, his pro-business government
had no interest in the plight of the Cuban people. What the industrial
powers really wanted was Spain’s colonies in the Pacific - Guam,
Puerto Rico and the Philippines. If Spain and the U.S. agreed to terms
over Cuba, the Cuban people would be free, but the U.S. would not possess
Spain’s most important assets - their Pacific island "stepping
stones" to China. Upon receiving notification of Spain’s acceptance
of U.S. demands in Cuba, McKinley immediately asked for a declaration
of war, and then backdated the declaration two days so the record would
show Congress acted before he received Spain’s communication.
The similarity to today’s situation lies in the
fact that the current administration wants absolute control over Middle
East assets - the oil spigot - and a truce with Bin Laden would not
accomplish that goal. A great many leaders on both sides of the aisle
have determined that U.S. control of dwindling world oil supplies trumps
every other issue and course of action. For them, everything else is
uncomfortable but necessary window dressing. The War on Terror, Homeland
Security, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, American war dead, Iraqi war dead,
massive deficits - all mean nothing. In their view, if America does
not take charge of the world’s oil supplies at this (to them)
critical juncture, Russia or China will, and they are determined not
to let that happen, whatever the cost.
Osama Bin Laden is aware of this sad reality, and he
knows if the U.S. did not seize control of the world’s shrinking
oil supplies another nation would. Certainly, he knows his offer of
a truce must necessarily fall on deaf ears. As geo-strategic crunch
time approaches, his alternating calls for global jihad and peace and
goodwill tell me he still lives in a fantasy world.
