One People, One Planet, HON!

The Oil Angle


2003, Political Commentary Design Originally for the Hieronimus & Co. Journal,
watercolor and pen and ink, 18¼” x 20¾”

Over and over the American people are told that the wars we wage in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are not about oil. Just like Russia’s struggles in Chechnya are not about oil. As the Bush Administration pounded the drums to invade Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks, Hieronimus decided to illustrate the oil angle. This seemingly obvious point has long been made by his wife and partner Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus on her long-running daily talk show on WCBM 680 in the 1990s: control of this “Black Gold triangle,” including major oil fields and the warm water seaports, is crucial to the economics of the developed nations whose elected governments rise and fall on this angle. It is no coincidence that the major petroleum-energy producing regions and their plants are in precisely these locations.

No doubt, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist supporters tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, making them unfit in our eyes to rule any nation, but the key reason his land was coveted by the United Nations was control of its oil fields. Cui bono? Who benefits? Answer: anyone involved in the greater plan to build connecting pipelines from these northern regions to feed directly into the Persian Gulf for export to the world.

Hieronimus’s love of flags is seen in his decision to identify each nation by its flag rather than by name. It should encourage some viewers to crack open a reference book to figure out which one is which.