Aside from Bush's cravenness before the House of Saud, there's a good reason not to use rhetoric about cutting oil imports from the Middle East - cutting imports from the Middle East is probably a bad idea. The effect (and aim) would be similar to an embargo, essentially, and that faces the same problems that embargoes like Cuba do and South Africa did. Namely, the effect is limited to how complete the embargo is, and it's questionable whether an embargo would even help anyway. How effective were sanctions against South Africa? How effective have they been against Cuba? How ineffective were they against China post-Tiananmen?
Nevermind the obvious problem of our near-perfect hypocrisy when it comes to the Saudis (ask Bill Sampson about that) we should really ask if the object of our foreign policy should be to impoverish countries because we dislike what they do with their money. I think it's a waste of time, frankly, especially when China and India will pick up any slack in oil demand.
None of this invalidates a real effort to get off of oil consumption, but we're idiots if we pretend that there's a difference between "good" and "bad" oil.
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3 comments:
The cry for "oil independence" is code for renewing the ANWR fight. Bush is trying to equate national security with the need for "homemade" solutions.
Probably, but they haven't had any luck with that so far.
ANWR's been killed and resurrected more times than Dracula.
I never understood this "independence from mideast oil" nonsense. Oil is a fungible product, no? As long as we are creating demand for it, it doesn't really matter where we get it from.
As for drilling in ANWR, that's like the equivalent of looking under the sofa cushions for change when you're trying to pay the bills. But then, you didn't need me to tell you that.
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