The Quote of 2006 with Implications for 2007

"For the United States, for U.S. planners, a sovereign Iraq would be a complete nightmare. Simply consider its likely policies. A sovereign, moderately democratic Iraq has a Shiite majority. The first thing they would do in fact are doing it already, is to improve relations with Shiite Iran next door, the majority of the clerics come from there, one of the major militias in the south was trained there, they may not love Iran, but they'd much prefer friendly relations than hostility with their major neighbor...I'm sure Washington planners are having nightmares about it. What might develop is a loose Shiite alliance, Southern Iraq, Iran, neighboring areas of Saudi Arabia, and that happens to be where most of Saudi oil is, so that alliance would control most of the world's energy, independent of Washington. An unspeakable nightmare which could get a lot worse. Europe is intimidated when the U.S. shakes its fist, and backs off. That's why China is considered a great threat. It's not a military threat, but it won't be intimidated. It's been around for 3,000 years, they've no particular interest in what the barbarians are saying, so they continue to invest, including in Saudi Arabia, the prize, send military aid, every reason why they would like to attract this alliance into their orbit, there are already major organizations, Shanghai Cooperation Council includes Southcentral Asian states, an Asian energy security grid based primarily in China, including Russia and neighboring states, it'll probably include India before too long. If the Middle East oil resources move into it, the United States becomes a second class power. Controlling the world's energy resources has been a prime policy objective for 60 years just as it was for Britain before us, and for obvious reasons. Well that's not trivial. Any withdrawal proposal that doesn't take this into consideration is just not serious."

Noam Chomsky, "Crises in the Middle East," September 21st, 2006.

The full speech was broadcast as recently as December 26th, 2006 on KPFK. The podcast can be downloaded from the audio archives.