It’s the Oil, Stupid!

NCfanNCfan Posts: 945
edited April 2007 in A Moving Train
April 16, 2007
It’s the Oil, Stupid!
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services

It is usually silly to offer a single solution to complex problems. But it's hard not to when looking at the serial savagery in Iran and the Arab world.

Oil — the huge profits it provides and the insidious influence it gives those selling it — explains most of the world's worries over the Middle East.

No, that does not mean the United States is fighting in Iraq to get control of its petroleum. For all the charges of "No blood for oil," the American occupation has neither been able to reverse a decline in oil production in Iraq nor alleviate skyrocketing oil prices worldwide. And, recently, the first new contracts of the now-transparent Iraqi oil ministry went to non-American companies.

What it does mean, though, is that the vast imported-petroleum needs of the West, India and China, and the resulting huge profits that pour into oil-exporting states, have super-sized the Middle East's problems.

Currently, much of the Islamic world is struggling to come to grips with modernity and globalization. Yet while the West pays little attention to disenchanted Muslims in India, Indochina or Malaysia, we focus our attention on Iranian and Arab radicals. They alone, thanks to oil, have the cash to fund jihadists and hate-filled madrassas.

The Palestinian problem illustrates this point. Since Israel's occupation of land taken after the 1967 war, much of the world has seen this issue as threatening to regional and global peace.

Such old territorial disputes are, of course, common — and go relatively unnoticed — throughout the world. Japan's Kurile Islands are still held by Russia. Tibet has been absorbed by China. Nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India fight over Kashmir. The list goes on.

Yet it's the anger over the tiny West Bank that in the past caused the Arab patrons of the Palestinians to embargo oil to the West and create long gas lines in Europe and America. As a result, a single suicide bomber from Jericho earns more press than anonymous thousands slaughtered in Darfur.

Today, terrorists operate from East Timor to Peru. But global anxiety has been continually focused on Middle Eastern terrorists, from the Palestinian assassins and hijackers of the 1970s to al-Qaeda's suicide bombers. These killers alone have had the means to disrupt the Western way of life. Take away Hezbollah's Iranian petrodollars and it could never afford weapons and foot soldiers to slaughter Westerners in the Middle East and beyond.

An oil-rich Saddam Hussein was a threat only because he had purchased more military hardware than is owned by most European powers — and used it to attack oil-exporting neighbors in a bid to control more of the world's petroleum reserves.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is confident that powerful nations abroad will overlook his thuggery in hopes of getting a chance to buy his country's oil —-- or in worry that any tension would send world prices even higher. Ahmadinejad also knows — and fears — that without supporting terrorists or trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that he'd be just another tinhorn loudmouth like Cuba's Fidel Castro or Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

At the same time, vast oil profits do little to help — and probably much to harm — Middle Eastern countries. Unlike in places where economic achievement is the result of savvy business leaders, a hardworking labor force and a literate public, tribal hierarchies in the Middle East simply metamorphosed into billion-dollar nations by virtue of sitting atop crude oil.

One result is a big inferiority complex in the Middle East. There is always the fear that gas and oil reserves will dry up, leaving a Libya, Iran or Saudi Arabia with as much global attention as a Chad or Bulgaria.

Another result is unstable societies. When nations acquire collective wealth gradually through their own industry, a middle class can arise. But in the Middle East, a few tribal and religious sects with oil are fabulously wealthy; most everyone else is abjectly poor. Illegitimate monarchies and jittery dictatorships — always in fear of coups, terrorists and revolutions — depend upon oil-needy foreigners, trading scarce oil and endless petrodollars for export goods and protection.

If the United States could curb its voracious purchases of foreign oil by using conservation, additional petroleum production, nuclear power, alternate fuels, coal gasification and new technologies, the world price might return to below $40 a barrel.

That decline would dry up the oil profits of those in the Middle East who now so desperately use them to ensure that their own problems must also be the world's.

©2007 Tribune Media Services
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    He he he! Where do you find this crap?
  • mammasanmammasan Posts: 5,656
    Victor Hanson is not telling us something we don't already know. Do you really think that if Saddam wasn't sitting on the second largest oil reserve in the world that we would really care about spreading democracy in Iraq. Our interest in the Middle East, by our I mean the west not just the US, is based solely on the oil under their feet. Remove that from the equation and we wouldn't give a rat's ass what happened in the Middle East. So while Hanson may say we didn't invade Iraq for the oil, because we don't own it and are not making a profit from it, we did invade because of the oil.
    "When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." - Ron Paul
  • mdigenakismdigenakis Posts: 1,337
    "Don't let the darkness eat you up..."

    -Greg Dulli

  • gue_bariumgue_barium Posts: 5,515
    NCfan wrote:
    April 16, 2007
    It’s the Oil, Stupid!
    by Victor Davis Hanson
    Tribune Media Services

    It is usually silly to offer a single solution to complex problems. But it's hard not to when looking at the serial savagery in Iran and the Arab world.
    Example? I mean, I think he may be onto something, but he gives nothing to back up "serial savagery". I guess I move on assuming Iranians are "serial" savages.
    Oil — the huge profits it provides and the insidious influence it gives those selling it — explains most of the world's worries over the Middle East.
    True.
    No, that does not mean the United States is fighting in Iraq to get control of its petroleum. For all the charges of "No blood for oil," the American occupation has neither been able to reverse a decline in oil production in Iraq nor alleviate skyrocketing oil prices worldwide. And, recently, the first new contracts of the now-transparent Iraqi oil ministry went to non-American companies.
    This is horseshit. For one thing the oil industry is a global one. Oil barons all over the world have financial interests in the Middle East.
    What it does mean, though, is that the vast imported-petroleum needs of the West, India and China, and the resulting huge profits that pour into oil-exporting states, have super-sized the Middle East's problems.
    ummm, hope nobody pukes.
    Currently, much of the Islamic world is struggling to come to grips with modernity and globalization. Yet while the West pays little attention to disenchanted Muslims in India, Indochina or Malaysia, we focus our attention on Iranian and Arab radicals. They alone, thanks to oil, have the cash to fund jihadists and hate-filled madrassas..
    Not to mention the "American-friendly" Saudis.
    The Palestinian problem illustrates this point. Since Israel's occupation of land taken after the 1967 war, much of the world has seen this issue as threatening to regional and global peace.

    Such old territorial disputes are, of course, common — and go relatively unnoticed — throughout the world. Japan's Kurile Islands are still held by Russia. Tibet has been absorbed by China. Nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India fight over Kashmir. The list goes on.

    Yet it's the anger over the tiny West Bank that in the past caused the Arab patrons of the Palestinians to embargo oil to the West and create long gas lines in Europe and America. As a result, a single suicide bomber from Jericho earns more press than anonymous thousands slaughtered in Darfur.

    Today, terrorists operate from East Timor to Peru. But global anxiety has been continually focused on Middle Eastern terrorists, from the Palestinian assassins and hijackers of the 1970s to al-Qaeda's suicide bombers. These killers alone have had the means to disrupt the Western way of life. Take away Hezbollah's Iranian petrodollars and it could never afford weapons and foot soldiers to slaughter Westerners in the Middle East and beyond.

    An oil-rich Saddam Hussein was a threat only because he had purchased more military hardware than is owned by most European powers — and used it to attack oil-exporting neighbors in a bid to control more of the world's petroleum reserves..
    At the behest of American-funded interests.
    In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is confident that powerful nations abroad will overlook his thuggery in hopes of getting a chance to buy his country's oil —-- or in worry that any tension would send world prices even higher. Ahmadinejad also knows — and fears — that without supporting terrorists or trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that he'd be just another tinhorn loudmouth like Cuba's Fidel Castro or Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe..
    Gosh, it's fun to kick a loudmouth's ass every now and again, isn't it?
    At the same time, vast oil profits do little to help — and probably much to harm — Middle Eastern countries. Unlike in places where economic achievement is the result of savvy business leaders, a hardworking labor force and a literate public, tribal hierarchies in the Middle East simply metamorphosed into billion-dollar nations by virtue of sitting atop crude oil..
    Iran is pretty well-educated and cultured.
    One result is a big inferiority complex in the Middle East. There is always the fear that gas and oil reserves will dry up, leaving a Libya, Iran or Saudi Arabia with as much global attention as a Chad or Bulgaria..
    You must have taken a piss before writing this paragraph.
    Another result is unstable societies. When nations acquire collective wealth gradually through their own industry, a middle class can arise. But in the Middle East, a few tribal and religious sects with oil are fabulously wealthy; most everyone else is abjectly poor. Illegitimate monarchies and jittery dictatorships — always in fear of coups, terrorists and revolutions — depend upon oil-needy foreigners, trading scarce oil and endless petrodollars for export goods and protection.
    ..aint gonna be any middle any more...
    If the United States could curb its voracious purchases of foreign oil by using conservation, additional petroleum production, nuclear power, alternate fuels, coal gasification and new technologies, the world price might return to below $40 a barrel.

    What a novel idea.
    That decline would dry up the oil profits of those in the Middle East who now so desperately use them to ensure that their own problems must also be the world's.
    It is the world's already.

    all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
    except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
  • SpecificsSpecifics Posts: 417
    Hmm, i think he got the title wrong, should have been:

    It's the Oil, this articles pretty stupid

    Or

    It's the Oil, if you cant see how i completely contradict myself all over this article you're pretty stupid.
  • OpenOpen Posts: 792
    Byrnzie wrote:
    He he he! Where do you find this crap?

    Ditto...
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