bechtelbloodandoil

** Director: ** Michael Klare ** Release year: **2008   The central argument of this film is that the reason for the war in Iraq and many other international conflicts is our addiction to oil. This is certainly not what most Americans think and is a very controversial topic. Klare makes a very strong argument for this in the film.  ** Who are the key social actors and stakeholders in the film? **  The most important stake holders in this film are the governments and citizens of first world countries without their own oil and those third world countries that do have oil reserves. The first world country that is the primarily focus is the United States and the third world country mentioned the most is Iraq, but there are several others mentioned as well. The government in the United States and other large economic powers are invested in acquiring a cheap and abundant source of fuel for their population and oil is a major part of this. The ones in control of the oil, however, are typically third world, unstable governments, many of which are in the Middle East. The governments aren’t the only one involved though. The citizens who use the fuel and see the externalities of its production and the soldiers who fight in wars for it are also important stake holders.  ** What does the film convey about the matrix of factors that contribute to our dependence on oil? **  This film goes into a lot of detail about the factors that contribute to our dependence on oil and makes several essential points. The major reason we are so dependent is that oil is central to American life. We are the number one consumers of this resource worldwide. Without it our economy would crash. 98% of our country’s transportation is dependent on oil alone and the next most reliant industry is agriculture. We also get many of our plastics, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and other every day products from oil. Our current oil addiction began in the early to mid 1900s, around the time of World War II and during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The use of oil in this time period allowed for many of the innovations of the industrial revolution and ultimately is the reason that we won the war. Unfortunately we used over one third of our domestic oil supply in this war alone. As a result a large part of Roosevelt’s presidency, as well as every president to follow, was concerned with acquiring foreign sources of oil.  ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What does the film convey about the matrix of problems caused by our dependence on oil? ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The matrix of problems caused by our dependence on oil began when Roosevelt started looking for new foreign sources of oil. Roosevelt was the first of many presidents to make treaties with Saudi Arabia and other countries for the purpose of securing oil. The problem with this is that the Saudi Arabian government we have agreed to protect is far from democratic and embodies none of the ideals that our government really aims to protect. Furthermore, in the process of trying to get more oil, our government has started many wars. The Truman Doctrine was essentially about going to war against Russia over oil in the Persian Gulf. This is definitely not way it was sold to the people at the time, but this is not the first of the last time that our government covered up the truth, according to Klare. The Eisenhower Doctrine followed a similar suit, as did the Nixon Doctrine with its use of Iran as a proxy for the defense of oil sources. During his presidency, Carter actually said that protection of the Persian Gulf, and there go the oil supplies found there, was of national interest. As president of the US, Reagan created CentCom specifically for the purpose of protecting foreign oil. When president Bush first mentioned the possibility of intervention in the gulf to protect our foreign oil interests he was met by a large opposition from most of the population, but when he later mentioned the possibility of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction it was suddenly different story, or so people thought. Most Americans think of Osama Bin Laden as a crazy terrorist who was born hating America. This couldn’t be much farther from the truth. According to the film, Bin Laden was actually an ally of the US originally and only became an enemy when the US refused to leave Kuwait after we had promised to. This shows that the root of Osama Bin Laden’s war actually was oil and that it played a huge role in the 9-11 bombing. Other problems with the latest Bush administration are the strategy of maximum extraction and the creation of AfriCom. The strategy of maximum extraction is the reason we have taken military control of the Persian Gulf. The creation of the African Command has extended the US search for foreign oil to a whole new continent. Because oil is so important to our current lifestyle and so much of it comes from unstable parts of the world, it is one of the largest weaknesses of our country. To make things worse, China is now following our lead, trying to acquire more oil. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What does the film convey about the matrix of affects that would be mobilized by a shift away from oil? ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This film does not directly address any of the effects that would be seen by mobilizing a shift away from oil, but it does explain some of the reasons that such a shift would be so difficult. The main reason for this is government opposition. When there was a clear energy crisis at the start of the Bush administration, the government refused to even release meeting notes from the energy security conferences that had. In essence, the National Energy Policy Development group was not subject to the same democratic process that the rest of government was. The head of this group, Dick Cheney, held meetings with corporate executives of many major oil companies in secret. This is not fair to the American people doesn’t really give us a chance to try and change things. Another problem with the government is its lack of honest reason for its actions. In specific, the government has lied to the people about why we went to war with Iraq. It wasn’t about WMDs, it was about oil security. The way things are now, the US military and energy policy are basically one and the same. This is clearly not the way things should be. To make things worse, our government currently spends more than 70 times as much money protecting our oil supplies as it does developing energy alternatives. With figures like this, is it really a surprise that we don’t have any more reliable sources of energy today? <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why? ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The most compelling aspect of this film was the large amount of very specific facts. The director did an excellent job of focusing on one specific aspect of the matrix of problems caused by our oil dependence and doing a very detailed analysis. The film also did an excellent job of considering the historical dimensions of the problem. ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? Why? ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This film had some very strong aspects, but it definitely had weak ones to. The weakest part of the film is that much of it was based on speculation. Without knowing the people’s and governments’ actual motives you can’t say why they have done what they have. The best thing that can be done trace what has happened in the past and make educated guesses about the reasons why. This is what Klare has done, but it is far from an absolute proof of motive. Another serious problem with the film is that it does not include any point of corrective action. We can draw a few conclusions from it, but it really only talks about the problems we are facing and not what we can do about them. Lastly, the film would have been stronger if had included a better analysis of how corporations enter the picture. It was mentioned that the government works closely with large oil companies, but it doesn’t express anything about the extent to which these corporations influence the government. This adds another side to the problems mentioned. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What kinds of corrective action are suggested by the film? If the film itself does not suggest corrective action, describe actions that you can imagine being effective. ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As stated previously, this film doesn’t really suggest any points of corrective action. The best thing that we can take away is that we need a more responsible government in this country. This may be apparent, but there is no mention of how we can actually achieve it. The easiest and most straight forward way is actively participate in politics and elect presidents and other government officials who embody the right beliefs, but this won’t solve all our problems, as our current presidency has shown. It is likely that we need much more fundamental changes to how we run the country, but there is no straight forward way to make this happen. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What additional information has this film compelled you to seek out? (2 sources) ** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This film did not leave me with very many questions that I thought I would be able to answer by myself, but there were a few things that I wanted to know more about. One thing was the book written by Osama Bin Laden that supposedly revealed all of his true motives. Unfortunately, after a pretty rigorous online search I was unable to find much about the book. My primary search engine was google.com. This can be interpreted several different ways. For one, the reason that there is no mention of the book could be that American government doesn’t want people to know what it says. I’m not a big fan of these sorts of conspiracy theories, but it is possible. An alternative could be that the book is not in English and therefore has not been seen much here. Another reason could be that the film had it wrong and this book didn’t really tell the eye opening tales that it suggests. Maybe the problem is that Americans don’t care about anything except having the cheap sources of oil and therefore this book would not be very popular. It is impossible to say what is really going on, but it would clearly take much more detective work to find out. The other thing that I wanted to learn more about was if our current president had made any progress amending our foreign dependency problems. It is clear that we are still dependent upon oil, much of which is imported, but there certainly hasn’t been very much mention of any kind of war activities. On this topic I was able to easily find many more resources. The first signs of trouble can be found on []. Even though effort is made here to show that the government has control over all of our defense concerns, we are still involved in 3 wars and have sent even more troops into Afghanistan. A more radical opinion can be found at []. Here Jack Smith makes the argument that Obama’s foreign policy is actually very similar to that of President Bush. This confirms that we need to make more fundamental changes to our government than just electing a new president. On the flip side, according to the Pentagon, Obama is making too many military spending cuts []. This shows that at least some steps are being taken in the right direction.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Title: **<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Blood and Oil
 * What is the central argument or narrative of the film? **