The problem with a certain type of American isolationist is that even when they’re right (no pun intended), they’re horribly wrong. Such is the case with Cal Thomas, whose syndicated columns are inflicted on anyone who picks up the Boston Herald as it’s thrown around for free across the city to inflate circulation numbers (why doesn’t the Herald just start begging for alms instead?) In the article ‘Getting serious about energy’, Thomas follows the rest of his conservative colleagues in taking White House marching orders to paint Iran’s existence as some horrid aberration, writes lifeless sentences like “Americans have always responded to major threats and challenges” (what is there to do regarding a major threat besides responding to it?), and tries to draw an analogy between the success of JFK’s moon mission in response to the ‘Soviet threat’ and a need to educate Americans about the necessity of energy independence as a security matter. Ok, that analogy and proposed tactic is sensible. Except that his reasoning with regards to Middle Eastern states follows disgusting thought processes like: “To become energy independent and no longer rely on foreign oil would be like depriving Dracula of his blood supply: he would shrivel up and die.” WTF?
“Americans have always responded to major threats and challenges.” What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? They ‘responded to the challenge’ of pre-existing native peoples by perpetuating the largest genocide in recorded history. They ‘responded to the challenge’ of British colonialism by eight years of war and strife. They ‘responded to the challenge’ of conflicts between southern business interests and northern ideas by collapsing into civil war and annexing The Confederacy. They ‘responded to the challenge’ of socialist thought by leaving the national artistic community in fear for their livelihoods. They ‘responded to the challenge’ of the USSR by aiding the slaughter of tens of millions of bystanders in proxy wars in Asia, Africa and South America. Their rich ‘respond to the challenge’ of forced desegregation by moving out to the suburbs and producing a strange inversion of the usual demographic patterns of affluence vs. geography. These moves aren’t ‘rising the to challenge’. They’re tactics born of lashing out in hoarse desperation, the same way any other nation does.
Here’s the article’s conclusion:
We’ll need a slogan. Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon were “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” How about this one for Energy Independence Day: “Let ‘em Eat Sand.”
This paragraph literally juxtaposes the sane way of thinking about technological independence with the the racist way. How did Cal Thomas miss the difference? Notice that Armstrong didn’t say “Let ‘em Guzzle Vodka”.
You have got to be shitting me. “Let ‘em Eat Sand”? Fucking conservative morons.
Well, the ‘conservative’ inclination—deciding that the best thing to do about other countries’ issues is to ignore them—has a pretty respectable intellectual pedigree… but there’s a difference between doing it for political stability and doing it to crash economies!
Makes me sick! America has been quite happily plundering the world’s resources for many years now arrogantly refusing to listen to anybody else. It seems that some level of realization is finally occurring - the world’s resources are finite and even your beloved leader appears to have recognized this. But I fear it’s too late.
That’s not exactly true (that terrorism would die). America was having to deal with Islamic terrorists 200 years ago, well before oil’s influence. That being said, any money that goes to the Middle East for any purpose is likely to fund terrorism, even though it be indirectly. If we (and every other country in the world) were to cease buying Middle-Eastern oil, terrorists would likely be hit hard in the pocketbooks. Of course, it’ll never happen. Someone will buy their oil. They’ll likely hate us (and England and France and Spain and every place with even a taste of Western values) no matter who buys their oil and ends up unofficially sponsoring them.
Even if you buy into the idea that terrorists hate us only because we want their oil, do you think that their hatred would evaporate the instant we stopped buying it? If history has taught us anything, it’s that these people know how to hold a grudge for 800 years or more.
The benefit of energy independence won’t be the elmination of terrorism or the elimination of America as a terrorist target. The benefit is economic. The benefit is that if Iran nukes Israel and Israel nukes Saudi Arabia, our economy doesn’t dive quite as hard.
If you want to help moderate the Middle East, let ‘em eat freedom. Let ‘em eat the Internet. Let ‘em eat philosophy and a Liberal education. Let ‘em eat a falafel stuffed with McDonald’s french fries. They’ve been eating sand for centuries.
Mark Jaquith: yeah, I thought of that Dilbert strip too! The very reasoning of ‘less oil buying = less $$$ for terrorists’ is suspect.
There is also a more complex issue of whether removing the governments of Middle Eastern states—reducing corruption, economic imbalance, dictatorship and the like—would actually produce a more liberal set of states. I doubt it; I think the strongest political force in Arab countries besides the current governments is religious extremists. Specifically, I think the domestic ‘opposition’ is made of people who’d produce more of a security/human rights/etc. headache than the current governing classes (eg., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.)
But switching from petroleum to other energy sources is not just a ‘national independence’ issue, it’s also a goal for the world, which is an obvious point to think of when quoting Neil Armstrong.
Bill Clinton said in June ‘05:
Wish we had his type back in the White House.