As soon as you see the recommendation from Noam Chomsky on the cover of the book, you can pretty much guess where McQuaig is coming from. I refer to the Chomskyan school of thought as American Monist: in short, the only actor on the world stage is America. It is the sole source of evil and depredation. Everyone else is motivated solely by love and concern for humanity, whilst America is, singularly, motivated only by greed, lust for power and a general animus for all things good, sunny and nice. Only America acts; everyone else is acted upon by the Hegemon, and can’t be blamed for the consequences of their actions. America is the Primus Mobilis. And America is bad. So, for example, the notion that an economy-based increased lust for oil is driving foreign policy is solely a characteristic of America; no other nation on earth appears to give a shit about oil. Certainly not France, Russia or China; McQuaig hardly mentions them. While McQuaig is forced to acknowledge that French, Russian and Chinese support for Saddam (and attendant undermining of UN sanctions) was related in some fashion to the oil deals they had each struck with Iraq, she airily dismisses the role that oil plays in their respective foreign policies. So the “oil as the root of all evil” trope is batted away in the space of two sentences when talking about other countries, but more than 300 pages are required to explain how oil and America are mutually catalyzing demon twins. When the rapaciousness of oil companies is discussed, it is almost exclusively American oil companies which are named; hardly ever any of the European, Russian or other oil companies. Because those other oil companies don’t possess the true indicia of evil, you see: they don’t stamp their barrels “Made in the USA”.
Bob Tarantino, “LIB Review: It’s the Crude, Dude”, Let It Bleed, 2005-03-05.
