The chief business of the American people is business,” Republican President Calvin Coolidge said in the 1920s.
The US has often even made business out of war. Before the US belatedly entered the fray in World War I, it lent huge amounts of money to Britain in what should have been a joint enterprise to save the world from tyranny.
After the war, the US demanded repayment.
“They hired the money, didn’t they,” Coolidge said.
The only reason the US entered World War II was because its territory was attacked in Pearl Harbour. And even then, the US would not have declared war on Germany. Hitler declared war on the US, relieving President Roosevelt of task. The US did not enter World War II to make the world safer for democracy. It entered because it had to.
Nor did the US attack Iraq to topple tyranny and make the world safe for democracy. No; it invaded Iraq to make the world safe for American business.
If the US had been interested in overthrowing tyrants to install democracy it would have dealt with half a dozen oil-less African dictatorships.
Now, perhaps a million lives later we might get a glimpse on how America put business first in Iraq because this week we saw the Democrats gain a majority in the House and possibly in the Senate. It means that the Democrats can use Congress to investigate why and how the US got into the Iraq mess. And no doubt they will do so to the maximum political advantage.
Of perhaps more importance than the mythical weapons of mass destruction is the way the oil-for-food program was corrupted.
The oil-for-food program began in 1996. It was to buy and manage $US46 billion worth of humanitarian aid by selling Iraqi oil. The principles behind the scheme were good: to allow Iraqi children to be fed and given medicine while maintaining an embargo to prevent military build up. But it was badly administered. If the US and others had paid more attention to making it work properly, none of the subsequent fiasco – the war and its aftermath – need ever have happened.
If the US Administration had worked with the UN rather than against it, the oil-for-food program would have been an effective way of ensuring Saddam posed no external threat.
The program ended in May 2003 after the Security Council lifted the sanctions following the US military occupation of Iraq.
After allegations that about 10 per cent of the oil-for-food money found its way to the coffers of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the United Nations set up an inquiry headed by the former head of the US Federal Reserve Paul Volcker. It was primarily concerned with the complicity of UN officials, particularly the son of the Secretary-General Kofi Anan. But it also pointed to illicit activities by between 4000 and 5000 private companies, including the Government-owned Australian wheat monopoly, AWB, in its final report in October 2005.
Volcker had always made it clear that his inquiry was a fact-finding mission, not a law-enforcement one. He always made it clear that it would be up to national governments to use his report as a basis for law-enforcement actions.
His final report listed thousands of suspect transactions by hundreds of companies. Russia and France were the main culprits, but US companies also bought Iraqi oil. In the case of the US there was only a smoking gun. While the Republicans controlled Congress that was as far as it would go. There would be no follow-up by the US national government.
Only one government has done so – the Australian Government.
In the US all we had was a UN-bashing exercise by the Republican-controlled Senate. There has been no vigorous inquiry – as in Australia — into the activity of US businesses by someone of the calibre of Terrence Cole.
It has not been pretty for Australia. US wheat traders have used the Cole revelations to steal our wheat trade. Our competitors have used them to besmirch Australia’s trade reputation.
Yes, AWB did wrong. But about 10 per cent of the $US46 billion in food and other aid bought with Iraq oil went covertly to the regime. Of the $US4.4 billion paid to Saddam, AWB accounts for just $US250 million. What about the rest? The vast bulk of the payments to Saddam originated from non-Australian companies.
It may well be that the Cole inquiry was set up because AWB was government-owned and the Government was desperate to distance itself from the illicit commercial activities of the corporation it owned – the right deed for the wrong reason.
Unfortunately, on the political front Cole has probably been prevented from finding out which politician knew what and when did he know it. Or more pertinently, which politician did not know and for how long did he choose not to know it?
And that is the nub of it: the turning of the blind eye by Australian and US politicians to the corruption that undermined the oil-for-food program which could have prevented this sorry mess.
Meanwhile, Australia’s trade reputation has been besmirched when in fact the Cole inquiry should have enhanced it.
At least we know the exact extent of the Australian corruption and the companies which engaged in it and that it is safe to say that otherwise Australian trade is among the cleanest in the world.
Now at last we might find out more about the exact role of the US and US business in the oil-for-food program so that Australia is not the only pariah.