Prof. Mark Galeotti -- in Moscow! -- is brilliant on how an ageing, increasingly isolated, paranoid dictator with no way out except jail or the morgue is consolidating police-spy power around himself, and substituting regular army troops for expendable mercenaries, as Putin prepares his gov't. to overreact and "break heads" to head off any popular riots -- a Russian Maidan. Will the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution be the trigger?
And there's the truism that Western observers always have trouble with, yet Galeotti oft repeats: In Russia, money is a "symptom" of power, not vice-versa like in the neoliberal West. In Russia money could be gone tomorrow; whereas power can get money or whatever money can buy whenever it wants. So Russia is beyond oligarchy. It's hard for us Westerners to conceptualize.
Everyday Russians expect their leaders to be corrupt, Galeotti argues, therefore, the Panama Papers were a big yawn for Russians. It's the corruption "in their face" that bothers everyday Russians. And so for now Russians don't make the connection between everyday corruption and Putin's regime. For now.
It runs absolutely counter to our Western intuition and sense of justice, but as Vladislav Inozemtsev points out, Russia's corrupt officials actually benefit in times of global economic crisis, both in terms of their personal wealth and public support.
Concludes Prof. Inozemtsev in this op-ed in the Moscow Times [emphasis mine]:
Today's Russia is not a normal country. A significant portion of people who can adequately assess the situation either left the country or are leaving it right now. Many entrepreneurs sold their businesses to bureaucrats and pulled money out of the country, realizing the futility of their labors.
[...] Of course, the problems are piling up — so sometimes they will come out. But both the speciality of Russia's situation and its difference from these in democratic market economies lies in the fact that the first alarm signals will sound when it will be too late to react. We will probably see a repetition of the dramatic events of the late 1980s — but, of course, this may not happen for awhile. Time during which economic problems will not preoccupy the Russian president — leaving him free to surprise the world once and again with his political follies.
It's well worth reading in its entirety to understand today's very strange Russia!
It seems my work is not done because I keep hearing two misconceptions in America repeated:
1) The President of the United States has something to do with gas prices; and
2) The U.S. can and should be "energy independent."
The first is a myth because of supply and demand. As for supply, with the exception of cartels, it's all poured into one big pool of oil, figuratively speaking. As for demand, it's growing in China and other developing countries and there's nothing we can do about it.
The second is a myth because there is a world market for oil, coal and natural gas, all highly fungible commodities. America is not Venezuela and Obama is not Hugo Chavez: it's not "our" oil and gas, we don't nationalize it. It belongs to huge MNCs like Shell and BP.
It does make sense to talk about "energy security," which Roger Altman explains:
"Let's get to the point where the amount we import from rogue or potentially rogue nations who might be hostile to us is down to a point where, if suddenly that supply was interrupted or shut off, we go right on."
Even so, it's a global market and we must keep this caveat in mind:
Increased energy security on the supply side, however, does not mean energy independence on the economic side. A smaller share of the oil we use in the U.S. comes from foreign sources today than was the case a decade ago. But an increase in the world oil price has left U.S. consumers paying more at the gas pump and reminded them of their continued dependence on market events beyond White House control.
So if people want to blame something, blame capitalism.
We in the West need to get educated about the history of the Middle East and Africa.
Before we ask, "Why can't they get their act together?" we must first acknowledge the role our "democratic" societies played in encouraging repression by the state, and in using sectarian and tribal differences to divide and conquer nations.
It has always been about access to oil and other natural resources. I know Americans especially hate that over-simplification, but really... What other explanation is there? Because we cared so much about sandy Muslim lands? And then there are the words of our leaders and diplomats who admitted as much.
I had grabbed an earlier version of this graphic off a Democratic Underground bulletin board from 2005. It made the point that the United States, which professes itself menaced by Iran, rather has Iran encircled by military bases. I have tried to update the map a bit, though this area is a moving target and the map no doubt isn't perfect. It is expressive enough, however, of the reality. Iraq and Uzbekistan no longer have American bases, but the US military now has a refueling station in Turkmenistan.
Some critics complained that forward operating bases are not much of a base. But actually, this map vastly understates the case. It shows only a few of the estimated 450 US military bases and outposts in Afghanistan, e.g. And it does not show drone bases, of which the US has 60 around the world.
Iran has 150 billion barrels in petroleum reserves, among the largest reserves in the world, but they cannot be exploited by US corporations because of Israel lobby-inspired US congressional sanctions on Iran. US elites, especially Big Oil, dream of doing regime change in Iran so as to get access to those vast reserves. Likely the most important US objection to the Iranian civilian nuclear enrichment program is that it could give Iran "nuclear latency," the ability to construct a bomb quickly if it seemed to Tehran that the US planned to attack. That is, the real objection in Washington to Iranian nuclear know-how is that it makes Iraq-style regime change impossible and so puts Iranian petroleum out of reach of Houston for the foreseeable future. This consideration is likely the real reason that Washington does not, so to speak, go ballistic about North Korea and Pakistan having actual nuclear warheads, but like to has a fainting spell at the very idea of Iran enriching uranium to 3.5 percent (a bomb takes 95%). North Korea and Pakistan don't have oil.
It seems as if neocon, Iraq War proponent, and ex-spook James Woolsey has found Jesus, so to speak, on the energy issue. He actually makes some salient points about what "energy independence" really means.
It was news to me that oil releases carcinogenic particulates into the air which cause tens of thousands of deaths each year in the U.S.
SCOTT SIMON, host: Every president - Democratic and Republican - since Richard Nixon has vowed to strive to make the United States energy independent. Forty years later, human beings have landed on the moon, human hearts are routinely transplanted, communism has collapsed, and silicon chips have made it possible to pack a library-worth of information into a device smaller than your thumb.
So why hasn't the United States or any nation become energy independent?
Jim Woolsey is the chairman of Woolsey Partners and a former director of Central Intelligence. He specializes in a range of alternative energy and security issues. He joins us in our studios. Thanks very much for being with us.
Mr. JIM WOOLSEY (Former CIA Director): Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: So what are some of the obstructions, technological, economic and political?
Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, in part we haven't been working frequently on the right problem. There are two energy systems essentially in the U.S. One is transportation - that's at 70 percent oil - and the other is the electricity grid - and that's over half fueled by coal and then natural gas, nuclear, hydro and others. They don't have very much to do with one another now.
Back in the '70s it was different. Oil fired power plants, provided about 20 percent of the country's electricity. So, if you were building a nuclear power plant or a wind farm in the '70s, you could well be replacing oil directly. Today, you're not.
SIMON: So when people talk about generating alternative sources of energy - and it often is things like wind or solar - that's not necessarily addressing the problem of foreign oil dependence.
Mr. WOOLSEY: It's not really addressing the problem of foreign oil dependence. No, that that doesn't have much to do with it and won't for many years.
SIMON: So where does that leave us?
Mr. WOOLSEY: In a way, there's been too much emphasis on the foreign side of this. Yes, we import well over half our oil now and that's a bad thing and we borrow a billion dollars a day essentially to import oil. But producing the oil domestically helps solve the balance of payments problem, but that's about all it does. It will not interfere with OPEC's domination of oil.
Something close to 80 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil are in OPEC states. And they are the low-cost producers and they have the big reserves. So they're going to be effectively running the international oil trade and running the cartel that runs it even if we drill more domestically. And so they're going to run the system.
We have to effectively destroy oil as a strategic commodity. Not destroy oil, but destroy its strategic role, its dominance of transportation.
SIMON: Well, that's why we've asked you here. It sound attractive. How do you do it?
Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, I think you want to focus on existing infrastructure and existing vehicles, and there are several things that could be done relatively quickly. One - and the administration is doing this, I think, and various people on the Hill, encouraging moving toward electrification. Particularly, I think, plug-in hybrids.
Another is improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines. There are a number of start-up companies that are inventing computer chips and valves and all kinds of things that you can use to modify existing engines and existing vehicles to get something like a 20, 30 percent improvement in fuel efficiency.
You can also encourage the use of biofuels generally. Require the automobile manufacturers much more rapidly than we're now requiring them to move to what's called an open-standard, flexible fuel vehicles. It just requires them to change the kind of plastic in the fuel line of the car and a bit of software -40, 50 dollars a vehicle - in the manufacturing process.
And that, I think, would an extremely positive step. One reason it would be positive is that we've got a serious health risk problem from using petroleum products. The fine particulates that are carried into the atmosphere by what's called aromatics - benzene, toluene, xylene - which is what the oil companies now use to increase octane, are highly carcinogenic.
It really looks as if tens of thousands of deaths from malignancy a year and hundreds of millions of dollars in added health care costs are caused by these fine particulates, which the oil companies have a special waiver on, essentially. If you run a chemical plant, you can't put benzene, toluene, xylene into the atmosphere, but they're permitted to do it because it's from a mobile source like gasoline in a car.
SIMON: People often point out you can burn oil, it's affordable - that's why it's good for cars. There's a reason why people use oil.
Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, it does carry a lot of energy in a relatively small space. But at least, as far as I'm concerned, that's about where its advantages stop, and there are just a number of things that are in the works that are going to give oil a real run for its money. Some of them are going to need some initial help, but I think the government role could largely be one of a Teddy Roosevelt-style trust buster - going after oil's cartel and oil's dominance of transportation, to break it.
Same thing happened to salt in the very early 20th century. Salt was a strategic commodity for thousands of years. It was the only way to preserve meat, countries went to war over salt mines. At the beginning of the 20th century, the coming of the electric grids, meant that all of a sudden refrigeration and freezing was available affordably and salt's dominance just fell apart within a relatively few years. That's what we need to do to oil. We need to make it as boring as salt is today.
SIMON: Thank you, Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. WOOLSEY: Thank you.
SIMON: Jim Woolsey, chairman of Woolsey Partners and former director of the CIA.
When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.
Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything -- just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts -- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-'stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.
Where does a man, who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated, get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy-inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.
I've been unhealthily obsessed with Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about -- in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying -- and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.
Remember Friedman's take on Bush's Iraq policy? "It's OK to throw out your steering wheel," he wrote, "as long as you remember you're driving without one." Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman's analysis of America's foreign policy outlook last May: "The first rule of holes is when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels."
First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you're supposed to stop digging when you're in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.
Even better was this gem from one of Friedman's latest columns: "The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it's all too familiar. It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: 'Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn't we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?' "
There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the "title" of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple-personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second, he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third, he's a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel?
Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: "It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: 'Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple-personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor's been drinking rubbing alcohol!' "
OK, so maybe all of this is unfair. There are a lot of people out there who think Friedman has not been treated fairly by critics like me, that focusing on his literary struggles is a snobbish, below-the-belt tactic -- a cheap shot that belies the strength of his overall "arguments." Who cares, these people say, if Friedman's book The World is Flat should probably have been titled Thief. He had wanted the book's title to match its "point" about living in an age of increased global interconnectedness?
And who cares if it doesn't quite make sense when Friedman says that Iraq is like a "vase we broke in order to get rid of the rancid water inside?" Who cares that you can just pour water out of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vase just to empty it of water? You're missing the point, folks say, and the point is all in Friedman's highly nuanced ideas about world politics and the economy -- if you could just get past his well-meaning attempts to explain himself, you'd see that, and maybe you'd even learn something.
My initial answer to that is that Friedman's language choices over the years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out. Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn't actually do anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind it's highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked.
But whatever, let's concede the point, forget about the crazy metaphors for a moment and look at the actual content of Hot, Flat and Crowded. Many people have rightly seen this new greenish, pseudo-progressive tract as an ideological departure from Friedman's previous works, which were all virtually identical exercises in bald greed worship and capitalist tent-pitching. Approach- and rhetoric-wise, however, it's the same old Friedman -- a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainly include lunching, reading road signs and watching people board airplanes.
Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman's stirring experience of seeing an IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot, Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days: "I will still take advantage of it -- but I no longer think of it as something I got for free."), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a "nightmarish neon blur" of KFC, BK and McDonald's signs in Texas, he realizes: "We're on a fool's errand."), and reads bumper stickers (the "Osama Loves your SUV" sticker he read turns into the thesis of his "Fill 'er up with Dictators" chapter). This is Friedman's life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee's signs.
Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: "I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, 'We need better headlights for our tri-plane.' " And off he goes. You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don't notice that tri-planes don't have headlights. And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There's so much shit flying around the book's atmosphere that you don't notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.
I laid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be a rough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, and the pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years.
Friedman then draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, it turns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oil prices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing a rising-and-then-descending slope of "freedom," and one showing a descending-and-then-rising course of oil prices.
Friedman plots exactly four points on the graph over the course of those 30 years. In 1989, as oil prices are falling, Friedman writes, "Berlin Wall Torn Down." In 1993, again as oil prices are low, he writes, "Nigeria Privatizes First Oil Field." 1997, oil prices still low, "Iran Calls for Dialogue of Civilizations." Then, finally, 2005, a year of high oil prices: "Iran Calls for Israel's destruction."
Take a look for yourself: I looked at this and thought: "Gosh, what a neat trick!" Then I sat down and drew up my own graph, called "Size of Valerie Bertinelli's Ass, 1985-2008 Versus Happiness." It turns out that there is an almost exact correlation! Note the four points on the graph:
That was so much fun, I drew another one! This one is called "American Pork Belly Prices Versus What Midgets Think About Australia 1972-2002."
Or how about this one, called "Number of One-Eyed Retarded Flies in the State of North Carolina Versus Likelihood of Nuclear Combat on Indian Subcontinent."
Obviously this sounds like a flippant analysis, but that's more or less exactly what Friedman is up to here. If you're going to draw a line that measures the level of "freedom" across the entire world and on that line plot just four randomly selected points in time over the course of 30 years -- and one of your top four "freedom points" in a 30-year period of human history is the privatization of a Nigerian oil field -- well, what the fuck? What can't you argue, if that's how you're going to make your point?
He could have graphed a line in the opposite direction by replacing Berlin with Tiananmen Square, substituting Iraqi elections for Iran's call for Israel's destruction (incidentally, when in the last half-century or so have Islamic extremists not called for Israel's destruction?), junking Iran's 1997 call for dialogue for the U.S. sanctions against Iran in '95, and so on. It's crazy, a game of Scrabble where the words don't have to connect on the board, or a mathematician coming up with the equation AB-3X = Swedish girls like chocolate.
Getting to the "ideas" in the book: Its basic premise is that America's decades-long habit of gluttonous energy consumption has adversely affected humanity because: a) while the earth could support America's indulgence, it can't sustain 2 billion endlessly copulating Chinese should they all choose to live in American-style excess, and b) the exploding global demand for oil artificially subsidizes repressive Middle Eastern dictatorships that would otherwise have to rely on tax revenue (read: listen to their people) in order to survive, and this subsidy leads to terrorism and a spread of "unfreedom."
Regarding the first point, Friedman writes:
Because if the spread of freedom and free markets is not accompanied by a new approach to how we produce energy and treat the environment … then Mother Nature and planet Earth will impose their own constraints and limits on our way of life -- constraints that will be worse than communism.
Three observations about this touching and seemingly remarkable development, i.e. onetime, unrepentant free-market icon Thomas Friedman suddenly coming out huge for the environment and against the evils of gross consumerism:
1. The need for massive investment in green energy is an idea so obvious and inoffensive that even presidential candidates from both parties could be seen fighting over who's for it more in nationally televised debates last fall;
2. I wish I had the balls to first spend six long years madly cheering on an Iraq war that not only reintroduced Shariah law to the streets of Baghdad, but radicalized the entire Islamic world against American influence -- and then write a book blaming the spread of fundamentalist Islam on the ignorant consumers of the Middle American heartland, who bought too many Hummers and spent too much time shopping for iPods in my wife's giganto-malls.
3. To review quickly, the "Long Bomb" Iraq war plan Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else's face; the "Electronic Herd" of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn't pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved "Golden Straitjacket" of American-style global development (forced on the world by the "hidden fist" of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the "Flat World" consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife's once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.
So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.
What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last 10 years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quickly reinvent himself before angry gods remembered to dash his brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose.
Or as Friedman might say, "Better two cell phones than a fish in your zipper."
Although the economic facts support those opposed to drilling, I still think we should open up ANWR and maybe the OCS to drilling, if that's what it takes to get Republicans to support more tax credits and investments for alternative energy. And 20 years from now, when gas prices haven't gone down thanks to increased domestic drilling, maybe we will recall this debate, and acknowledge who was serving the American people, and who was serving Big Oil.
On Wednesday morning President George W. Bush urged Congress to overturn a 26-year ban on offshore oil drilling in the U.S. and open a part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to petroleum exploration. Flanked by the secretaries of Energy and the Interior, Bush also proposed streamlining the construction process for new oil refineries, and explained that these moves would "take pressure off gas prices over time by expanding the amount of American-made oil and gasoline." Coming a day after Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain made a similar appeal to enhance domestic oil exploration, Bush was sending an unsubtle election-year message to the American public: I care about the economic toll of $4-a-gallon gas, and Democrats in Congress, who have opposed such an expansion, don't.
But there's a flaw in that logic: even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer continental shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027. (If oil prices continue to skyrocket, the savings would be greater, but not by much.) Opening up offshore areas to oil exploration — currently all coastal areas save a section of the Gulf of Mexico are off-limits, thanks to a congressional ban enacted in 1982 and supplemented by an executive order from the first President Bush — might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents a gallon at most, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And the relief at the pump, such as it is, wouldn't be immediate — it would take several years, at least, for the oil to begin to flow, which is time enough for increased demand from China, India and the rest of the world to outpace those relatively meager savings. "Right now the price of oil is set on the global market," says Kevin Lindemer, executive managing director of the energy markets group for the research firm Global Insight. President Bush's move "would not have an impact."
The reason is simple: the U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world's oil. Offshore territories and public lands like ANWR that don't allow drilling may contain up to 75 billion barrels of oil, according to the EIA. That may sound like a lot, but it's not enough to make a significant difference in a world where global oil demand is expected to rise 30% by 2030, to nearly 120 million barrels a day. At best, greatly expanding domestic drilling might eventually lower the proportion of oil the U.S. imports — currently about 60% of its total supply — but petroleum is a global commodity, and the world market would soak up any additional American production. "This is a drop in the bucket," says Gernot Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Still, with Americans hurting at the pump, it may be difficult for environmentalists and other opponents of increased domestic drilling to resist the push for more oil, whatever the cost. As recently as his 2000 presidential run, McCain had been against offshore drilling, but he changed that position Tuesday, arguing that individual states should decide for themselves. (He remains against drilling ANWR, however, pointing out that "we called it a 'refuge' for a reason.' ") The Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist — considered a possible vice-presidential candidate — also flip-flopped, backing McCain's position. Though Democratic Senator Barack Obama and most of his party are against the proposed expansion, McCain and his supporters may have the public on their side: a recent Gallup poll found that 57% of Americans believe we should open up new territories to drilling. "It could help in the long term," says Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University. Still, he acknowledges that even expanded drilling is unlikely to bring prices down much.
Though offshore drilling conjures up fears of catastrophic spills, the petroleum industry rightly argues that safety measures have improved considerably in recent years. A 2003 report by the National Research Council found that only 1% of the oil that polluted U.S. waters came from petroleum operations, like the offshore drilling platforms that run in the Gulf of Mexico — which also weathered Hurricane Katrina without massive spills. If it can be done in an environmentally friendly fashion — and with oil companies themselves footing the bill — opening up some new territory to drilling might be worth it. The reality is that our economy will run on petroleum for the foreseeable future, and that while investing in alternatives is the only way to secure truly low-cost energy over the long term, we'll still need oil for decades more. But any attempt to increase supply must be coupled with even heavier investment in energy efficiency and other methods to decrease oil demand — an approach that, to his credit, McCain has said will be a key part of his energy policy (although in the Senate he has skipped or voted against every fuel efficiency bill since 1990, according to the League of Conservation Voters). In any case, Bush's plan is unlikely to be realized — the Democratic-controlled Congress remains against it, and Bush can't open up the new territory on his own.
ively small amount of petroleum, we're missing out on the opportunity to truly break our addiction to crude. This week the Senate again failed to renew the tax credit for renewable energies like solar and wind; the credit, which expires at the end of the year, is key to the healthy growth of low-carbon alternatives. Without it, "the industry will simply stop," says Santiago Seage, CEO of the Spanish company Abengoa Solar. With energy demand skyrocketing, we'll need more oil, and alternatives like solar, and demand-side measures like toughened auto fuel efficiency standards or tax incentives for Americans to purchase less wasteful cars. We'll have to include action on global warming, like the recently defeated Warner-Lieberman carbon cap and trade bill. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that under the bill, U.S. petroleum consumption would have dropped by nearly half by 2030 — savings far in excess of the amount of oil we could ever pull from Alaska or the coasts. "We can't drill our way out of this and we can't conserve our way out either," says Bullock. "We need both." Fair enough. But the sad truth is that neither drilling nor conservation will have an immediate effect on rising gas prices, even if they do have an immediate impact on the presidential race.
With the recent spike in gasoline prices, politicians and pundits have begun calling again for energy independence for America. Ethanol refiners continue lobbying Congress for massive subsidies, while electric utilities and coal producers promote clean coal and a nuclear renaissance.
Oil executives complaining that U.S. restrictions have hampered developing new sources of oil, advocate opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. "Energy independence" has morphed into code for "drill it all, dig it all and double it all." For the present, traditional forms of energy are needed to find the glide path into the terrain of alternative energy sources, yet in the future, the emphasis cannot rest solely on supply.
People of faith recognize the market functions by supply and demand, and now, at least in the near term, some demands appear unsustainable and too costly for the common good. To produce enough ethanol to fill one tank of gas in an SUV takes 450 pounds of corn. To supply all U.S. gasoline through ethanol would require planting 71 percent of American farmland in fuel crops.
In 1950 a single family car might be parked near a house averaging 1,100 square feet, but in 2005 probably several cars would stand in driveways of houses that doubled to 2,340 square feet with fewer occupants and lots more space to heat and cool.
Currently, the U.S. with less than 5 percent of the world's population uses one third of the world's electricity produced annually. With drained wetlands, clear-cut forests and paved-over top soil the capacity of the planet to carry life is rapidly being exhausted by human habits and lifestyles.
If energy were the coin of the realm, that coin would have two worn sides: first, the problems associated with global warming, and second, the challenges posed by energy security.
Global warming could initiate a new sense of community among all countries, since "everyone lives down stream" of hostile climate change. About one hundred million people in the world live one meter above sea level. With increased global warming exacerbated by burning fossil fuels, the melting ice caps would inflict unimaginable flooding of these poor populations, plus introduce diseases previously unknown in temperate regions.
Known world petroleum reserves will last 80 to 100 years, natural gas 70 to 90 years. The geopolitical imperatives to secure control of energy resources mount. Question: was the invasion of Iraq more about weapons of mass destruction or controlling the oil supply? People of faith see a simpler lifestyle and a more intentional use of resources as an essential component of peace building.
Pope Benedict XVI in his 2008 World Day of Peace Message said, "We need to care for the environment: It has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion." The "good of all" extends to succeeding generations who equally deserve a healthy, and not degraded, earth.
Two approaches make sense. First, mount intense and massive national investment on the scale of the moon race to develop renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.) and high-tech energy (hydrogen-generated power, fuel cells, nuclear fusion, etc.).
Second, adopt an ethic of "less and local" to address the short term urgency. More oil can be "found" in Detroit by designing more fuel-efficient cars than from ANWR. More electricity can be "generated" from retrofitting homes with better insulation than from another coal-fired plant.
A new energy consciousness begins with numerous personal choices that collectively grow into the political will to change.
Rev. John Rausch, a Glenmary priest, teaches, writes and organizes from Stanton, Kentucky, in central Appalachia.
In the following op-ed, the neocons (as represented by that right-wing think tank, Heritage Foundation) are pretty frank about their post-Bush agenda:
- Even more Pentagon spending, although we now spend as much on our army than the rest of the world combined;
- More offensive, preventive U.S. strikes (here re-branded as "damage-limitation strategy"), even if America is not threatened;
- Permanent war against Islamic radicals (as the new Cold War), no matter where or how weak that Islamic minority may be; and
- The U.S. guaranteeing, by means of military force, Western access to trade routes and natural resources (read: oil & gas).
None of the above is actually necessary, as Mr. Spring falsely concludes, "to protect the American people and their families." Rather, even more massive investment in America's Military-Industrial complex would shore up America's slipping hegemonic - "hyperpower" status, and (hopefully) give the U.S. outweighed international influence as its economic power declines relative to Asia, the EU, and Mideast's.
The neocons don't know much about economics. They are not even pro-globalization in the Tom Friedman sense. Rather, they have an outdated 19th century, zero-sum view of the world where guns and guts get the gold. All they know how to do is spend money on more and bigger weapons, recklessly pull the trigger, and hope that this will guarantee America's future.
But they are nutty, they are wrong, and they will bankrupt our treasury and our moral credibility if we let them.
George W. Bush is in the last year of his presidency. Yet the greater war against terrorism will continue long after he's out of office.
So, as he prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address, he needs to address the requirements for national defense beyond Iraq.
This isn't to say he shouldn't mention Iraq. Our progress there in the last year remains a vital issue, and the American people deserve to hear about it. What President Bush must do, though, is tie his explanation of the progress in Iraq to the broader requirements for military preparedness.
First, Bush must remind us this isn't the time for a "peace dividend." Even if the U.S. achieves a swift military and political victory in Iraq, one that would allow tens of thousands of Americans to leave Iraq, the broader war will continue.
Our country can't afford to hollow out the military when we need it to win the war against Islamic extremists.
Unfortunately, we're still rebuilding from the "procurement holiday" forced on the military in the 1990s. Because we didn't purchase enough weapons systems during that decade, we're forced to spend more today to buy the equipment the military needs. [Like armored Humvees? -- J]
This increase must allow the military to recover from the shortfall and put it on the path to sustained investments for new weapons and equipment.
That leaves less available for buying current weapons systems. For example, the Navy has been forced to reduce construction of Virginia-class submarines to one per year — even though constructing two per year could have reduced the unit cost to $2 billion per boat.
The Air Force has been forced to scale back dramatically its purchasing of F-22 Raptor tactical fighters. It's slated to obtain just 183 F-22s despite its requirement for 381.
The Army has been forced to extend the production time for its Future Combat System by five years.
This president ought to leave a very different military to his successor than Bill Clinton left for him. That, of course, will cost money.
For example, it will cost $8 billion more than is currently planned per year for the Navy to buy the new ships it needs and $3 billion per year for the Marine Corps to recruit and train thousands of necessary new warriors.
How much will the total bill be? Well, military analysts at the American Legion suggest it would take a sustained investment of 5 percent of GDP each year. Experts at The Heritage Foundation think it can be done for 4 percent — slightly more than the 3.9 percent appropriated this year.
Bush should make it clear that our military spending is low compared to what it's been other times we've been at war. And he should point out that we need to invest today to have the military we'll require in the years ahead.
The president also needs to articulate a sound national security strategy. It ought to be called a "damage limitation" program. This would explain how he intends to protect the American people (as well as friends and allies around the world) from attack. [Take note: They're saying it's America's responsibility to protect its friends and allies from attack. Boy, these neocons talk out of both sides of their mouths! On the one side, they half-heartedly complain that Europe and Asia don't spend enough on their own defense. But on the other, they admit they want our friends to be dependent on American power, since this guarantees America's influence. - J]
Such a pro-active stance would be a welcome change from our Cold War policy of accepting vulnerability by relying on a strategy of retaliation (mutually assured destruction) in case of attack.
A damage-limitation strategy would be designed to minimize the likelihood of a successful weapons of mass destruction attack on the U.S. and its friends and allies. After all, other nations are less likely to attempt to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons — or attempt to use these weapons — if their attack is likely to fail.
Meanwhile, our military needs to field the correct mix of offensive and defensive forces. We must maintain the conventional forces necessary to go after Islamic extremists anywhere in the world, which is an essential component of the damage-limitation strategy's central goal of providing protection to the American people and allies.
America's general purpose forces, however, cannot focus on the threat of Islamic extremists alone. There are two other broad requirements of the damage-limitation strategy that can be met only through modernized general purposes forces possessing broader capabilities.
The first is to prevent a major power threat to Europe, eastern Asia or the Persian Gulf. This requires enough conventional military power to counter the organized armed forces of aggressive countries.
The second requirement is to maintain access to vital resources and conduits for global trade. In this case, U.S. general purpose forces must be capable of projecting power to distant regions in order to defend access to those resources.
America's military must also be capable of protecting vital trade routes, whether at sea, in the air, in space or in cyberspace.
Our recent focus on Iraq is understandable. But it's time to broaden the nation's perspective regarding national defense. That's where the State of the Union speech comes in.
Iraq is a critical battle in a long war, just as Korea and Vietnam were important battles in the Cold War. Sustained investments in the military are urgent and necessary to achieve ultimate victory.
Most importantly, President Bush should use the speech to make a solemn pledge to the American people that the military investments he is advocating are necessary to protect them and their families.
Everybody knows former Fed. Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan is a long-haired, sandal-wearing, tofu-eating, pot-smoking socialist who likes to wear "Buck Fush" t-shirts and smash windows at anti-IMF rallies in his spare time. He has zero credibility, so we shouldn't pay any attention to his opinions on Iraq.
America's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W. Bush's economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam's support for terrorism.
Obviously, biased ideologue and stealth GOP 2008 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has zero credibility, so don't read the following article, don't listen to him.
Seriously though, Newt is a savvy guy – he knows it's in vogue to criticize Bush, and that's what he seems to be doing here.
But in fact Newt believes "World War III" against Islamic extremists "has already begun." Even Bush doesn't go that far with his "War on Terra."Although Newt doesn't elaborate it here, his main criticism of Bush is that W. hasn't gone far enough in confronting militarily Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians.
So no, any criticism of Bush is not good criticism. Newt criticizes Bush for the wrong reasons and with ulterior motives. I agree with Newt about needing energy independence (not just for security reasons, but for the environment's sake), as do a majority of most Americans, who even support higher gasoline taxes for alternative energy research – poll numbers which Newt surely reads. But Newt has his own very scary agenda here.
Good thing Newt is even less popular among voters than Hillary!....
Washington — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.
A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.
"None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war," the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives.
Gingrich, who led the so-called Republican Revolution that won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994 midterm elections, said more must be done to marshal national resources to combat Islamic militants at home and abroad and to prepare the country for future attack. He was unstinting in his criticism of his fellow Republicans, in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
"We were in charge for six years," he said, referring to the period between 2001 and early 2007, when the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. "I don't think you can look and say that was a great success."
Thursday's National Conservative Student Conference was sponsored by the Young America's Foundation, a Herndon, Va.-based group founded in the 1960s as a political counterpoint to the left-leaning activists who coalesced around the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Gingrich retains strong support among conservatives and ranked fifth among possible Republican nominees behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, with the backing of 7 percent of those queried in a ABC News/Washington Post poll taken last week. The poll surveyed 403 Republicans and Republican-leaning adults nationwide and has a 5 percentage-point margin of error.
"I believe we need to find leaders who are prepared to tell the truth ... about the failures of the performance of Republicans ... failed bureaucracies ... about how dangerous the world is," he said when asked what kind of Republican he would back for president.
Gingrich has been promoting a weekly political newsletter he calls "Winning the Future." It's available free to those who leave their e-mail addresses at www.winningthefuture.net, one of several Web sites he is connected with or operating. Gingrich began writing the newsletter in April 2006, and it now goes out to 311,000 readers each week, said Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler.
Political salon
At another Web site — www.americansolutions.com — Gingrich is running a virtual political salon, with video clips, organizational information and contacts revolving around his conservative vision for the country's future. It asks supporters to join in an Internet "Solutions Day" on Sept. 27, the anniversary of Gingrich's so-called Contract With America, a slate of conservative policies he led through Congress as speaker of the House a decade and a half ago.
"What I'm trying to start is a new dialogue that is evidence-based," Gingrich said Thursday. "It doesn't start from the right wing, it doesn't start from the left wing," he said, but is an effort to get politicians and voters to "look honestly at the evidence of what isn't working and tell us how to change it."
Gingrich was interrupted with applause once, when he called for an end to the biting partisanship critics say has polarized national politics and paralyzed the workings of government.
"We have got to get past this partisan baloney, where I'm not allowed to say anything good about Hillary Clinton because 'I'm not a loyal Republican,' and she's not allowed to say anything good about me, or she's not a 'loyal' Democrat. What a stupid way to run a country."
He reserved his most pointed criticism for the administration's handling of the global campaign against terrorist groups.
"We've been engaged in a phony war," said Gingrich. "The only people who have been taking this seriously are the combat military."
His remarks seemed to reflect, in part, the findings of a National Intelligence Estimate made public last month.
In the estimate, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that six years of U.S. efforts to degrade the al-Qaida terrorist group had left the organization constrained but still potent, having "protected or regenerated" the capability to attack the United States in ways that have left the country "in a heightened threat environment."
"We have to take this seriously," said Gingrich.
"We used to be a serious country. When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany," he said, referring to World War II.
"We beat all three in less than four years. We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against ... [terrorist groups], and we're losing."
Successful approach
Gingrich said he would lay out in a Sept. 10 speech what a successful U.S. approach to this threat would have looked like over the past six years.
"First of all, we have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, 'We're not going to rely on you,' " he said.
The United States imports about 14 million barrels of oil a day, making up two-thirds of its total consumption.
Man, Rolling Stone must have the worst web site of any major publication. If you want to read Taibbi's latest posts, you'd better have a friend at Google to find them for you online. Anyway, here 'tis, a bit belated but still not past its expiry date…
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com Posted on May 9, 2007
There is a growing number of people out there who believe the Reid-Pelosi Iraq war supplemental is a gigantic crock of shit, and who think the Democratic Party leadership should now officially be labeled conspirators in the war effort. I've even seen it suggested that Reid and Pelosi should now be sent official "certificates of war ownership," to formally put them in a club with Bush, Cheney, Richard Perle and the rest of the actual war authors.
The growing tension between the real antiwar movement and the Democratic Party was reflected in a long article over the weekend in the New York Times. "Antiwar Groups Use New Clout to Influence Democrats." The piece that described how an umbrella group of antiwar activists called Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq was ready to drop the public relations hammer on the Dems, should they cave too easily in their negotiations with the president.
The thinking goes something like this: the Democrats, who are mostly the same people who voted for the war in the first place, don't really want to end it. They do, however, want to take political advantage of antiwar sentiment. So they will appear to be against the conflict but set things up in such a way that their "efforts" to end the war will fall just slightly short, like a fourth-quarter pass thrown by a point-shaving quarterback.
I was squarely in that camp until recently, when it occurred to me to wonder; if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were to wake up one morning with innocent, uncorrupted brains and decide, really decide, to end the war in Iraq, how exactly would they do it? And the answer, I think we all have to admit, is: they would do it exactly the way they're doing it now.
Neither of these Democratic leaders, after all, are Huey Newton, or even Benjamin Spock. They are not going to get up on a table, shake a shoe in the direction of the White House, shout "Fuck you, pig!" and just turn off the money, consequences be damned. No, these are career bureaucrats, political herd animals who survive year after year by clinging for dear life to the concept of safety in numbers.They will watch the bushes with great big eyes to see what is rustling back there, and when exactly two-thirds of the herd decides to bolt, they all will -- not just the Democrats, but the Boehners and McConnells too, leaping over logs, tearing off big chunks of fur against the bark of trees, etc.
I can certainly see a scenario in which people like Reid and Pelosi would make a secret deal to compromise now and give Bush his money, in exchange for another bite at the apple later this year -- by which time a veto-overriding coalition of Democrats and "moderate" Republicans will have magically coalesced. The Republicans crossing the picket line later this summer will inevitably claim to have done so with heavy heart, out of principle and "concern for the safety of the troops," and yet at the same time there will mysteriously appear a new raft of appropriations calling for expensive dam and highway projects in certain districts.That tends to be the blueprint for how 67% of congress will catch up to 67% of the population on major issues like these.
So maybe Reid and Pelosi really are working the phones on this one, who knows. What I do know is this; there are elements of the Democratic-crafted Iraq supplemental that are not only severely regressive but would actually tend to encourage the continuation of the insurgency. Anyone who wants an example of why the areas in which the Democrats and Republicans are in agreement are more significant than the ones in which they differ need only look at the two parties nearly unanimous endorsement of the "Benchmarks" the Iraqi government must meet, according to the supplemental. The key passage reads as follows:
(2) whether the Government of Iraq is making substantial progress in meeting its commitment to pursue reconciliation initiatives, including a hydro-carbon law...
It is notable that the hydrocarbon law comes in first place in this clause, ahead of "legislation necessary for the conduct of provincial and local elections," reform of de-Baathification laws, amendments to the constitution and allocation of revenues for reconstruction projects. For whether or not it really was "all about oil" at the beginning of the war, the fate of the occupation really does hinge almost entirely upon oil initiatives now, as the continued presence of U.S. troops in the region may depend on whether or not the Iraqi government bites the bullet and decides to eat the proposed hydrocarbon law in question.
The law, endorsed here by the Democrats, is an unusually vicious piece of legislation, an open blueprint for colonial robbery of the Iraqi nation. It is worth pointing out that if you go back far enough in the history of this business, the law actually makes the U.S. an accomplice in the repression of Saddam Hussein, the very thing we claim to be rescuing the country from.
This has all been described at length by better reporters than myself, people like Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt, but the genesis of the proposed law goes something like this:
During the Saddam years, the Iraqi government racked up massive debts as Hussein stole outright much of the country's oil revenues and built himself elaborate palaces packed with gold leafing and Balinese whores and whatever else assholes of that ilk use to furnish their garish pink mansions. Upon occupying the country, the United States agreed to forgive some of that debt in exchange for its acceptance of a "standard International Monetary Fund program," which among other things included an end to consumer price controls on food and fuel -- a move that, whatever one's feelings about government price controls may be, inarguably made it more difficult for a newly-impoverished, war-torn population to afford to eat.
Another condition was the liberalization of the economy, and the opening up of the oil industry to foreign interests. To recap: Saddam Hussein rips off Iraqi people, America "liberates" said people from Saddam, then bludgeons them with Saddam's debts until they hand over the keys to the oil industry.Nice deal, yes?
The proposed Hydrocarbon Law is a result of pressure from the American government on the Iraqis to draft an oil policy that would adhere to the IMF guidelines. It allows foreign companies to take advantage of Iraqi oil fields by allowing regions to pair up with foreigners using what are known as "production-sharing agreements" or PSAs, which guarantee investing companies large shares of the profits for decades into the future. The law also makes it impossible for the Iraqi state to regulate levels of oil production (seriously undermining OPEC), allows oil companies to repatriate profits, and would also allow companies to hire foreign workers to man facilities. Add all the measures up and the Hydrocarbon law not only takes control of the oil industry away from the Iraqi state, but virtually guarantees that the state will profit very little from future oil exploitation.
Now, I live in America and have been known to drive a car occasionally and I also understand something else -- when mighty industrial countries need oil or anything else, they're going to take it. They're also unlikely to acquiesce forever to the whims of an organization like OPEC out of mere morality and decency, when military power can change the equation. Anyone who's going to be shocked, shocked by this kind of shit had better be prepared to live in a tent and eat twigs and berries instead of African cocoa or Central American sugar or any of the millions of other products we basically steal from hungry, dark-skinned people around the world on a daily basis.
But I'll tell you what I can do without. I can do without having to listen to American journalists, as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle, bitch and moan about how the Iraqi government better start "shaping up" and "taking responsibility" and "showing progress" if they want the continued blessing of American military power.Virtually every major newspaper in the country and every hack in Washington has lumped all the "benchmarks" together, painting them as concrete signs that, if met, would mean the Iraqi government is showing "progress" or "good faith."
"President Bush will not support a war spending bill that punishes the Iraqi government for failing to meet benchmarks for progress," was how the AP put it.
"Among the mile markers that should be used to measure Iraqi progress is a finalized revenue-sharing agreement on current and future oil reserves," was the formulation of the Savannah Daily News.
Still other papers, like the Baltimore Sun, cast the supplemental as a means of exercising "tough love" with the lazy and ungrateful Iraqis, who to date have failed to show interest in governing their own country. "The talk around Congress," wrote the Sun, "was of putting together a bill with (probably nonbinding) benchmarks, designed to hold the feet of the Iraqi government to the fire -- or at least near the fire."
The title of the Sun editorial, humorously, was "Small steps" -- as if such a radical decision about what may turn out to be a fourth of the world's oil reserves is a "small step."
Of course, among politicians, it was the same bullshit. "And we now have to see... a good-faith effort on the part of the Iraqi government," said Maine's Olympia Snowe, "that they're prepared to do what it's going to require to achieve a political consensus." The recently "antiwar" Chuck Hagel concurred: "We're seen the Iraqi government miss benchmark after benchmark," he said. "You have to connect consequences to those in some way."
Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, described the benchmarks as a means to "hold the Iraqi government accountable." As if their failure to pass the Oil law would make them "not accountable."
Moreover, let's just say this about the Democratic Party. They can wash their hands of this war as much as they want publicly, but their endorsement of this crude neocolonial exploitation plan makes them accomplices in the occupation, and further legitimizes the insurgency.It is hard to argue with the logic of armed resistance to U.S. forces in Iraq when both American parties, representing the vast majority of the American voting public, endorse the same draconian plan to rob the country's riches. This isn't a situation in which there's going to be a better deal down the road, after Bush gets thrown out of office. Looking at it from that point of view, peaceful cooperation with the Americans is therefore probably impossible for any patriotic Iraqi; the economic consequences are too severe.
(A side note: there's also an argument to be made that the smart play for the Iraqis is to cooperate now, and then tear up any agreement made with the Americans once they get their troops out.The instant our army leaves, any "laws" passed now under American pressure will be meaningless anyway. Yeah, sure, take all the oil you want... hey, do you want these bath towels, too? Oh, wait, you're leaving? You sure you can't stay? Etc.)
Moreover, this endorsement of these neoliberal "benchmarks" by the Democrats makes me believe a lot less in their "gradualist" approach to ending the war. If they viewed the war as much of the world did, as a murderous and profoundly immoral criminal enterprise, they would understand that morally, they really have no choice now but to refuse to send Bush even a dime more for this war. After all, it's impossible to justify on any level voting to give George Bush more money for more troops "in the short run" if you believe that the occupation is fundamentally evil and exploitative.But the Democrats clearly do not believe it is wrong. They don't even mind having a big hand in it. They just don't think it's going very well, and understand that in the long run, it's a non-starter politically.
And that, in the end, is about the best thing you can say about Democrats -- they are just barely smart enough to step out of a burning house.Well, maybe they are. Tune in next fall, for the next supplemental...
