Sentiment is growing in both political parties for extending the U.S. military presence in Iraq in order “to ensure the safe flow of petroleum,” according to the Nov. 12th issue of The Nation magazine.

Not only is President Bush protracting U.S. engagement in Iraq but the two leading Democratic contenders for his job, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, don’t appear eager to quit Iraq, either.


Clinton told The New York Times Iraq is “right in the heart of the oil region” and thus “it is directly in opposition to our interests” for it to become a pawn of Iran or failed state. Obama has also spoken of the need to maintain a robust US military presence in Iraq and the surrounding area, writes Michael Klare, the magazine’s defense correspondent and professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.

Senior officials in both parties, he notes, “are calling for a reinvigorated U.S. military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries.”

Klare writes no dramatic change in U.S. policy in the Gulf region should be expected from the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic. “If anything,” he says, “we should expect an increase in the use of military force to protect the overseas flow of oil, as the threat level rises along with the need for new investment to avert even further reductions in global supplies.”