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The Dilemma of Mixed Motives, and Human Decency

Sometimes it is all about the oil.
When the oil companies are in charge, it is all about the oil.
Sometimes it is coal, or canals, or tulips, or gold.
Whenever the business people are in charge, it is all about money.  


When we invaded Iraq, it was all about the oil.  


Saddam Hussein had once been a ferocious tiger, 
perfectly willing to kill Iraqis or Iranians, Kurds,
soccer players, or his own relatives.  But when we invaded,
it was not because Hussein was a monstrous threat to humanity:
he was contained, snarling, bluffing, blowing air, pretending
to be what he had once been:  a monster.  When we invaded,
it was because Iraq had oil!  Lots of oil!  Oil we need!


We pretended Iraq was about humanity, about savagery,
about chemical warfare, and nuclear (in)capability.  
George Bush and his business friends thought it was possible
to establish a democracy right in the middle of mid-eastern oil
that would be a light unto the nations, and sell us oil. 


We didn't invade Rwanda.  We waited.  Kosovo?  We waited.
The monsters who were killing each other in Africa and
Eastern Europe were as savage as Saddam had been,
but they had no oil.  We let them go too long.  We shared
in their savagery by waiting too long.  Some of you
have been in the churches lined with the skulls of the dead.


Sometimes it is both oil and human savagery that we see.
In Libya, it is both.  Muammar Gaddafi is no less a monster
than Saddam Hussein was.  If we did not know that at first, 
we soon learned.  Most of Libya's oil goes to Europe because
their refineries are designed to refine that kind of oil.  
We are prepared here to refine more sulpher than they.  


So we tolerated Gaddafi.  Europe tolerated Gaddafi.  
Oil money made it easier to see that Gaddafi's savagery
was Libya's problem.  Our problem was oil.  It is not, we said,
our problem to deal with Colonel Gaddafi, the savage.


So the Libyans did.  After Sudan, after Egypt, Libyans
said it was time for Gaddafi to go, and they rebelled.  
They had good reasons, and at first it went well, but Gaddafi
had both sweet oil and savage guns, and he started the killing.


We, here in the United States, have been caught between
our lust for oil--not so much Libya's oil--and our shame 
and anger at the savagery of Kosovo and Rwanda and Gaddafi.
We don't have to pretend to be pure and unstained: we own
both lust and shame, but whether our motives have been mixed,
both before and about Libya, we are, at least, aware 
of our own mixed morality and motives:  both oil and decency.


I hope we can keep it mostly about decency, and drive Gaddafi
out of Libya, and then leave, ourselves.  Libya will be a mess.
It should be Libya's mess.  Let them find for themselves 
what they want to be; what they want to do with their oil
and their humanity.  I hope we do not stay too long in their space;
their air space, or their hopes.  I hope they do well.  

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