Some choice bits on King’s comments:
“I’m going to suggest that future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind – the first of the resource wars,”
”Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure the resources for their own people at the expense of others.”
- Well, no surprises there, but thank you for saying it Mr. King, you are one of a rare breed of those who are, or have at one time been ‘government approved’, and who can thus speak with a degree of inside/establishment knowledge on these things, who dares to confirm what should be obvious to anyone with a brain and a reasonable degree of intellectual honesty.
The idea that we gave a shit then, or give one now, about either dictators or dangerous weapons in the hands of dictators is utterly laughable. A nation that cares for such things does not then sell guns to such nations, as we did and continue to do, with great enthusiasm.
“I went into the White House in 2001 to persuade them that decarbonising their economy was the way forward – I didn’t get much shrift at that time,” he said ruefully.
“What I can tell you is that if I had managed to persuade the government of America that investing – instead of going into Iraq – in decarbonising their economy with roughly a tenth of [the estimated $3 trillion the US spent on the war], they would have managed it.”
- This is a shocking stat to my mind, a lot like the tragic fact that the whole world’s population could be given access to clean water for less money than Bill Gates has, and for vastly less money than we’ve spent on bailing out banks…bonuses which in the USA are currently under investigation as they have seemingly not been used to facilitate, for example, loans, but rather been used as a bandage to keep business (and bonuses) as usual.
Imagine what a different and potentially wonderful world we could be living now if that’s how the war money had been spent…the American economy decarbonised, no need for interference in the middle-east any more, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings maybe wouldn’t have happened…the USA taking a lead on climate change and the world already making huge steps towards a strong and binding Kyoto II agreement.
*sigh*
