Today I went to my kid’s elementary school and encountered this sincere but grossly ignorant hippie-chick standing right in the path of the disembarking children off the bus. Behind her, flanking her were 12-foot tall proportioned pictures of a girl and a boy and something to the tune of “Imagine if you were in your kids place.”
The idea being that I would stand there and envision this stern looking kid staring down at me and be struck with terror. And were they real I would have been, because frankly, a 12-foot tall kid could wipe the floor with me. And that is really the point of parents; your kids have a healthy respect of you because they know that if they stray outside the lines too far you will wipe the floor with them. The hippie-chick doesn’t understand this. She thinks that parents are co-equals in the kid process; really that kids are democratic equals in the home environment and if you really cut it down to size, she is probably correct… …for her kids. She doesn’t have a job; her kids do not have a job. She has an intellect on a 3rd grade level, so do her kids. She most likely (from the odor around her) smokes dope and if they are not already at that point, so will her children very soon. She doesn’t bathe, her kids probably don’t either…
You get the point.
I couldn’t resist the urge to confront her after I dropped off my children (who do bathe by the way). I mean she put herself between me and the school, so I figure that like her, doing her constitutional duty to demonstrate, I needed to exercise my right to free speech.
“I respect your efforts, but do us a favor and teach your kids that while they can enjoy total unfettered freedom in your house, very close to home is a real world that has no such compassion. A real world with guns, knives and evil people who do not negotiate with good intentions. Your kids will be well served if they understand that the cliff edge of the world tolerates a lot less than you might before assigning time out.”
She went on to tell me about some trip to India and some other drivel about peaceful coexistence. I frankly told her that whatever discussions that she had while in India quite obviously were of no great importance because had she been dealing with really significant stakes, her dialogue approach would have been at best disregarded and at worst… …well you might well remember Graham Staines and his two sons.
Staines, a Christian missionary working in India, was traveling and ran afoul of what is fairly prominent in India, anti-Christians. Staines, unarmed, and his two sons were burned alive in their vehicle while surrounded by a chanting crowd. Perhaps if Staines had threatened time out he might well be alive. It would be tragic enough to just know that Staines and his sons were murdered but the fact is that assaults and murders of Christians in India, this supposedly peaceable and happy state where the Dali Lama resides in exile and Hindus love their cows, are a pretty common thing. Just as with the Sudan.
We now have none other than George Clooney and his father showing up in Sudan and decrying the genocide not of the hundreds of thousands of Christians, by the Janjeweed Militias, but of other Muslims. It was quite clear from watching the interview on NBC that the issue became one of importance when it became politically correct; that is, once Muslims started killing Muslims in the Darfur, then it is fine for “enlightened” actors to treck off to Sudan and Chad and cry out for action. Sadly, the thousands of Christians machete’ed, raped and shot so far garner little sympathy because, and forgive me for my cynicism, in the worldview of the “enlightened”, Christians most likely deserve it for their actions, impoverished or not.
While I was in Iraq in 2004 and long before that in 2001 I was well aware of the slaughter of the innocent in the Sudan. I am sure that at first people threatened the Janjeweed with time out but it didn’t work and now in a world of peace, love and dope and ‘why can’t we all just get along’ do-gooders with $10,000 handycams and fat bank accounts from efforts at pretending on the big screen, we are witness to refugees in Chad who are still being attacked by Janjeweed. Butchers who from the look of their technicals and assault weapons didn’t get the memo on time out.
And it would be all good if we could disengage. Among nations the United States is very unique. We occupy real estate which remains pretty difficult to access; unless of course you are an undocumented worker from south of the border, in which case you can essentially just walk north until you reach a bilingual McDonald’s where upon, after a little work at getting a false ID, you can get a job paying pretty well.
We didn’t have to engage the world due to this position but the nature of greed in markets and lets be completely honest, greed among Americans, demanded that we engage and leave the protected shores for other lands. Now we complain about our leaders and celebrate actors who think that they are doing the world a favor by making movies that tell only part of the story. But hey, in this complicated world of pretenders and politics, you have to be careful about whom you seek to protect (slaughtered Christians) and whom you seek to defend (oppressed Muslims).
Either way everything would be a whole heck of a lot simpler if the ONLY agenda we had in the world was going in an wacking groups that are trying to exterminate entire groups of people. And agenda completely divorced from any concern over the backlash that such butt-kicking might have on our economy.(Here’s a little secret, don’t trust me, just read history, it would be overall better if we sided with the Christians on this one. I know, it isn’t politically correct, but I am thinking that the group that follows Jesus and people like Mother Teresa is probably better in the long run than the group that lauds people like Bin Laden. Just my theory.) Above for your education I have supplied you with a terrific map that lays out just where things are happening and what is happening in the Sudan.
And so we go to gas
I for one am very glad that we have $3.00 a gallon gas. I would prefer it to be upwards of $4.00. It has nothing to do with soaking my countrymen. I mean, I have a 90 mile round trip commute every day and gas prices affect me considerably. But what I have never understood is why I spent a month in France back in 2000 driving two turbo-diesels, one a Fiat mini-van and the other a 6 passenger Opel sedan, both of which easily cruised at 100 mph down the French freeways and neither of which got less than 40 mpg, yet upon arrival back here in the USA I couldn’t buy anything like them.
The fact is that consumers drive markets and Americans didn’t want diesels. Oh I know we can speak of conspiracies and the evil Tri-lateralists and CFR members. Heaven knows that people have to have someone to cast stones at and isn’t President Bush so easy to try and knock down? But the fact of the matter is that historically Americans do not get motivated until one of two things happen; they are threatened with yellow-hoards attacking them in the heart of LA or they start having to roll their monthly gas bills into their home equity loan request. As evidenced from the current immigration insanity, even the peaceful take-over of California by Mexicans isn’t enough to get American’s moving. I suspect that once the illegals hit the outskirts of Las Vegas people will begin to act. Northern Californians may get their separate state just yet…
Now understand that we only get about 20% of our foreign oil from the Middle East. That isn’t much. We have more than enough oil in the Americas to support our habits for a very long time. The issue is what we have spent to protect the free flow of oil in the Middle East. It is time to stop that dependency but the only way to get Americans to sacrifice their daily use of Ford Excursions and H2 Hummers is to hit them in the wallet.
This doesn’t mean giving up H2s and land yachts of all varieties. It means having some mental connection with the billions of dollars we spend to protect our interests in the Middle East and our lack of willingness to see the long term and demand sensible vehicles that allow us to give up the 20% of our oil that we get from that part of the world.
You can blame Halliburton and Exxon and whomever else but these people merely supply a market with what it demands. Congress merely responds to what it thinks will get it re-elected. True. You tell GM you want a plug-in car and refuse to buy anything else and eventually you will get some sort of vehicle that meets your need. You tell Congress that we don’t want ANY Middle Eastern oil and truly mean it by going to the polls and voting as such and they will stop voting for policies that send us to the Middle East. You tell all your friends that real Americans follow a policy of independence and self-provision without putting ourselves at the mercy of dictators around the world so we can continue the stream of oil and you will get people to follow through peer pressure.
The problem is that up to this point very few of us have been doing this.
There are two reasons and two reasons only why we are involved in the Middle East; one, Israel is both our friend and the most stable nation over there and every Arab and Muslim country in the world has vowed to destroy them; and two, we need the oil. No other reason. As a soldier as long as it is my nation’s policy to protect its strategic interests I will go, and I have gone, to the Middle East to support the policy which seeks to stabilize the Middle East for the sake of protection of our national interests. The issue is that now is the time to change those interests. The worst possible situation for us is to have organization of states in the Middle East. It would be best to have a bunch of Bedouins roaming the sands without a national government that can raise dedicated armies and support overt policies to destroy Israel. Unfortunately, we have supported the formation of formal governments through money transfers for their only asset and they in turn have supported two major attempts at the destruction of Israel as well as what are now legendary terrorist attacks against just about every decent country in the world.
And by the way, this is nothing new for the Muslim world. In the 1300s they were roaming southern Europe trying to dominate everything up to the Arctic Circle. We have the result of that in the form of the still-occupied Kosovo and Bosnia. This is all very consistent with the Muslim mandate as well. The Muslim sees the world as a place to conquer and spread Islam for the glory of Allah. The problem arises when Christians and Jews get in their way. Islam authorizes the destruction of anything other than the true faith. So blowing up Jews in pizza parlors is all in the norm for the Muslim.
Trust me, I don’t make this stuff up. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I am not an agendist. I just know history and I know how this all shakes out. We have but one choice if we wish to avoid continued bloodshed and truly embrace an autonomous national security policy. We divest ourselves of anything in the Middle East short of Israel. Oh and by the way, Israel did not cause all of this. Palestine, prior to the formation of the nation of Israel was a loosely associated assortment of goat herders and other malcontents who spent their time trying to kill British soldiers. There were no “Cedars of Palestine”, those were in Lebanon, back when, I might add, the country was run by Christians and considered the Pearl of the Mediterranean. Then Syria invaded and Lebanon was essentially wiped out. The Lebanese had done nothing to hurt Syria but being that they were next door to Israel and Syria didn’t like the roadblock, the sensible thing was to turn the Pearl of the Med into the happy hunting ground for the Hezbollah, Hamas and PLO.
When I was in Iraq the conversation went like this;
Me to the Iraqi: You know, most of Palestine lies in the nation of Jordan. Why don’t Muslims call on Jordan to cede land to the Palestinians for their state?
Iraqi: Because Israel stole the land.
Me: Israel stole the Palestinian lands in Jordan?
Iraqi: No they stole the land from the Palestinians.
Me: And the Israelis are working on giving a portion back to the Palestinians but why doesn’t the Muslim world demand that Jordan participate too?
Iraqi: Because the land belongs to Jordan.
Me: But, it was the Palestinians’ before the formation of Jordan.
Iraqi: But if the Palestinians took over land in Jordan they would wreck it. And why doesn’t Israel just give them back their land?
Me: Maybe if giving it back didn’t mean their total destruction they would. Where do the Israeli’s go?
Iraqi: I don’t know but they stole the land.
And so it goes forever. Understand this, if a toilet doesn’t flush in Jakarta, the Indonesians blame a plumber in Tel Aviv. That is just how they think. Every bad thing that has befallen the Muslim world is because of Israel and yet every decent bit of progress in the Middle East has occurred in Israel. Israelis don’t walk into Falafel dealerships in Algeria and blow themselves up. Again, most of Palestine lies in what is Jordan and we NEVER hear a call for the Jordanians to give up any of their property.
So in the end, we are not having high gas prices because of conspiracies or because of gouging or because of any other nefarious reason other than the complacency of the American consumer. If Americans stopped buying Crown Victoria’s and decided hat they only wanted fuel-efficient turbo-diesel hybrids that is what the market would give them. As well, consider that we have more oil in oil shale in the Western States than all the known oil reserves in the Middle East. Canada has more reserves than all of the Middle East locked up in tar sands. At about $40 a barrel these reserves become economical to tap into. They just require infrastructure. We have all the uranium and coal needed to supply as much electricity as we will need for 200 years. There is no reason why we could not have an energy independent economy in the next 5 years.
What throws me in all of this is that in 1969 we put men on the moon. We have not returned since 1975. The technology for all of these things has existed for years and yet we have chosen to funnel billions into the most unstable real estate on the planet. Certainly changing from oil to alternatives will mean a restructuring of the economy but so did converting from typewriters to computers. We will create new jobs and job descriptions and we will create new prosperity and new opportunity all the while we will be depriving the Middle East of the dollars necessary to wage war on all of us.
It is not beyond America’s ability, but so far it has been beyond our desire. When will we wake up and realize that such a choice has everything to do with us as individuals and very little to do with the President or Halliburton?
