A Perspective on the U.S. Invasion of Iraq


I’ve been reading Future: Tense by Gwynne Dyer recently and he presents a very interesting perspective on the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Let me just put a disclaimer that this is my paraphrasing on Dyer’s book and I’d recommend that you read it.

In a nutshell, Dyer points out that when the Cold War ended the world was left with one superpower and the best chance in our History to move toward a one-world U.N. style of government. This created a problem for the United States in that its mighty arsenal and economic super power influence was directly related to people seeing the United States as a safe and stable economic haven for investments, supported further by the fact that the U.S. Dollar was the reserve currency utilised worldwide. The situation is as fragile as investors simply investing elsewhere, and, perhaps, moving to the Euro as the International currency of choice. Dyer describes it as such: “In mid 2004, the total amount of foreign money invested in the United States in forms that could be sold off fairly quickly was $8 trillion.” Should something like this transpire, by day two the Dollar would be worth half of its original value the day previously. Certainly we can see the Euro taking the charge as of late, threatening the Dollar. Dyer’s comments illustrate the effect the takeover of the Euro may have.

So, using Dyer’s line of thought, America did what it had been doing since the end of the Second World War through to the late 1980’s – make it appear as there is an International boogeyman out there and thus cause the Free world to come running to America the Policeman. Certainly the “Axis of Evil” tone of George W. Bush’s speeches resonate of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s. America has gone on to do what is described as “theatrical micro-militarism” to make it appear that the U.S.A. is shouldering the burden of defending the world from chaos.

9/11, Dyer argues, presented the springboard necessary to began the path that George Bush has taken Americans, and the world, down. Dyer states that 9/11 was an inevitable historical occurrence, but questions the existence of substantial sleeper cells waiting to claim it’s next victims. Dyer quotes the U.S.’s own figures in that “only 625 people, the vast majority of them non-American, were killed by ‘international terrorism’ in 2003, down from 726 people worldwide in 2002: about two people a day, far fewer than die from dog bites.” Judging by these stats, I think fears of an Islamic Talibanisation of the world is unlikely. Research and compare the number of murders in America versus the number of soldiers killed in Iraq for a perhaps even more alarming statistic.

Dyer continues along the lines that Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq are all small theories, again supporting the international police image, coupled with Cold War style rhetoric. America doesn’t need to invade places like Iraq for control of the oil as it would be cheaper to purchase it over the free market than it is to pay for a war which can not be one (the Americans can go home whereas the Iraqi’s ARE home and, like Vietnam, such wars are impossible to win). There is also a suggestion that Saddam Hussein was looking at utilising Euros as opposed to Dollars for oil sales which sparked the American war machine. This makes sense. Should Iraq, followed by the Saudi’s move toward the Euro, then it facilitates what I presented earlier.

So, where does this leave us? Dyer reasons that if the Americans pull out of Iraq in the next year or so then we can salvage the position our world was in back in 1990 when the Soviet Union collapsed. If the Americans prolong their stay in Iraq and possibly move elsewhere, then we will be in a very dangerous position.