Burma, Darfur and Democracy — The Bush Betrayal

If you’ve been hiding out in a remote cabin for a few days, the brutal troops in Burma bludgeoned a protest of 100,000 monks into submission over the past few days. All Bush did, as he has done for years, is give lip service at the U.N. to denouncing the latest crackdown in Myanmar, but he did little else.

Bush is only interested in using the “freedom” narrative to justify military dominance of the Middle East oil reserves and gas pipelines, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars . He has brought no freedom to Iraq, only death and bloodshed that far exceeds what existed under Saddam Hussein.
Combined with Saudi Arabia as an “ally” (although they are the major cradle and financiers of Al-Qaeda terrorists), with control of the Iraq and Iran oil reserves, and Afghanistan for a gas/oil pipeline, the U.S. would control the primary oil reserves in the world. (The Bush Administration is particularly focused on Chavez, by the way, because Venezuela produces oil and has what many consider to be large untapped offshore reserves, which will be needed as the Middle Eastern lighter oil becomes depleted.)

Western interest in asserting “ownership” of the oil in the Middle East goes back to the early 1900s when the British militarily dominated Iraq and later wrested virtual ownership of the Iranian oil reserves. In fact, when a Democratically-elected and generally pro-Western government was elected in Iran, the U.S. overthrew it in 1953 because the charismatic head of state had the “radical idea” of declaring that the Persian oil fields belonged to Iran, not Britain. (This caused the chain of events, after the installation of the Shah, that has led to the current hardline Islamic government in Tehran.)

So it is no surprise that Burma – and Darfur for that matter – will receive little but lip service in “advocating” for freedom and the protection of innocent lives from Bush. George W. is not interested in spreading democracy; he is interested in bolstering the already flagging economic interests of the U.S., period.

You might ask then how Burma and Darfur figure into this?

It’s a little complicated, but it runs something like this.

Burma and Sudan do have some oil reserves and natural gas. In Burma, they are largely undeveloped (only about 0.3 percent of the world’s total reserves). In large part China has laid claim to exploiting the industries in both countries (and is very far along in extracting oil from the Sudan). India also has a role in helping the military dictatorship in Burma develop its natural gas industry. In fact, Indian companies were in Burma to sign oil and gas development contracts just this past week, as peaceful monks were being bludgeoned, presumably tortured, and killed.

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