Blood and Oil

In my last post, I referred to a piece by Victor Davis Hanson, one of the Web's best commentators on the world scene. Today, he’s at it again. In a piece called “Blood and Oil” Hanson states:

Islamic jihadists, fed from petrodollar wealth of the Middle East, have the cash to arm and plan operations from Baghdad and Kabul to Madrid and London. Thanks to oil, unhinged leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Chavez in Venezuela can stay in power (and demand the world's attention) despite policies that ultimately harm their people, ruin their economies and imperil their neighbors.

Russia, meanwhile, is essentially threatening Eastern Europe with energy cutbacks and reviving the old Soviet nuclear and arms industries. It's stirring up an already volatile Middle East by selling radical Islamists everything from nuclear reactors to high-tech anti-tank guns. President Bush may have seen, as he attests, something reassuring in the heart of President Putin. But Russia's new oil riches offer a fast track back to superpower status -- which we're already seeing them use to silence critics at home and abroad.

It seems to me that we can win the war against Islamofascism relatively easily, but not by listening to geopolitical retread like James Baker and his “non-partisan” study group, who will, I suspect, offer retreat, appeasement, and delay as their primary remedies for Iraq, and by implication, the broader WoT.

But in a way, the Baker group really has no options. It appears that we don’t have the will to beat Islamofascism militarily. Stated bluntly, we don’t have the stomach to do what needs to be done. So be it.

So, for those who demand a bloodless war, we can do it without a shot, or a missle, or a bomb. But to do it, we’ll all have to suffer, major US corporations will need to (or be forced) to make major modifications to their business plans, and the fruits of our suffering and labor will have to be shared with friend and foe alike.

We need—right now, this very minute, this very second—to initiate a War against Oil (WaO). I’ve written about “War against Oil” before, but I’m more convinced than ever that it may be the only solution in our fight against Islamofascists.

The United States of America must become fully energy independent by the year 2016. As a country, we’ve done hard things before, and I’m absolutely certain that we can do this. The problem, of course, is political will. From President Bush to both Houses of Congress, there is no political will to get this done. And that’s a national tragedy.

We need taxation of gasoline (even if it causes a recession). We need very high fuel economy requirements for automobiles and trucks within three years and a significant tax on low efficiency vehicles (even if the automobile manufacturers scream). We need a massive multi-billion dollar research initiative for workable petroleum alternatives that can come on-line in five years (even if the oil industry screams); we need nuclear power on a very fast track (even if environmentalists scream), and yes, we’ll need to look for domestic sources of petroleum for the short and mid-term (even if environmentalists scream even louder).

We should do this not to “save the earth” or to avoid “catastrophic climate change.” We should do it because it's a weapon that the death cult we face cannot counter. Without petrodollars, these 14th century barbarians are lost. In a decade, we can hurt them badly – very badly. If we share the technology with the rest of the civilized world, we could, I suspect, reduce oil consumption by a significant amount. Within 20 years, by a very significant amount. Every percentage point is a battle won. In time, the Islamosfascists will lose their trump card and with it, their advantage.

And that would be a very good—and very satisfying—thing.