Of course it does. But the elevation of the region to an Unsolvable Obsession has created a situation that is worse than stalemate. Everyone seems invested in failure, yet having to succeed.

shrieking comments about "raghead" in 3...2...

How to reduce Arab resentment of the West?

Gee....isn't there a country in the heart of the Middle East that we support, which infuriates the Arab world? Maybe if we stopped supporting that country, then Arab resentment of the West would decline.

Hint: it starts with an "I" and ends with an "l".

#4 fundamental mistake: that defending Israel in any and all circumstances is actually of any strategic importance whatsoever to the U.S. I'm personally extremely tired of that one.

they need our money as much as we need their oil.

Not quite right, Kevin.

They need money - but not necessarily ours. China, India, and Japan are also competing for oil.

Meanwhile, countries such as Russia and Venezuela gain influence.

A major failing I see in the Washington establishment, both D and R, is that they don't seem to get nationalism at all. They don't understand that people would rather go against what Washington thinks are their own interests rather than be subject to the dictate of a foreign power.

For example, they don't seem to understand that the best way to help the ayatollahs consolidate power in Iran is for the US to strongly and publicly back the opposition: most of the people resent the theocratic rulers, but they are also proud Iranians.

Washington also has a habit of mistaking what western-educated elites think for what most of the people think.

As soon as we can develope the reasons why we bear no responsibility for Iraq and there will be no consequences for the US we will be out of there.
With Kevin Drum, no doubt a leading proponent of the theory that the Iraquis brought it all on themselves cause they weren't as smart as him.

...then figuring out a way to reduce Arab resentment of the West suddenly seems pretty important. The big question is: how?

You do this by doing exactly what Luttwak suggests: leave them the hell alone.

While I think there are active things we could do to make them like us better, there are a hell of a lot of active things we do now and have done in the past that make them hate us more. But I've never heard any Islamic militant say they hate the West because the West is ignoring them.

Luttwak has been beating this social Darwinist drum for a while now.

Think tanks -- nice work, if you can get it.

"But if you believe they do pose a threat, then figuring out a way to reduce Arab resentment of the West suddenly seems pretty important. The big question is: how?"

But that's the thing, getting the hell out of the Middle East WILL help reduce arab resentment of the West! A primary motivator for their antipathy is the way we keep pushing them around and generally meddling with them.

Also I'd have to object to this:

"And I imagine there's a sizable coalition of (a) anti-imperial leftists, (b) heartland isolationists, and (c) barroom hawks who think we should just let the ragheads kill each other off, who would agree with him."

I do very much agree with his statement, but that doesn;t mean I want to "just let the ragheads kill each other" any more than opposition to the Iraq war means "I want to keep Saddam Hussein in power."

Yes, supporting a country which starts with "S" and ends the second word with an "A" has never infuriated any Arab.

Of course ignoring the Middle East means ignoring Isreal, so it's not bloody likely.

Now, if only Isreal would behave like Taiwan, and we could say that we're staying out, but will defend Isreal if needed, and then tell Isreal that there are a list of things they better not do or the deal is off.

Bill Mazur:

"The Middle East will stop being a problem when the Arabs run out of oil. Not before."

Good post, though.

Sorry, but Big Ed makes more sense than you do. Your conclusion is that we have somehow mortally offended the Muslim regimes in the Middle East and we have to make amends (or, I suppose, destroy them utterly).

If we waste our time asking the Iran, Syria, etc. what we can do to make them like us better, we're being ridiculous. As for conquering them, it's obvious that the American people see no purpose in a big war in the Middle East, and I think they're right. Luttvak's shocking argument that we should step down our activities there make a lot of sense. I would add that it is the conservatives who have the most stake in perpetuating the notion that we have to establish a "new order" in the Middle East or be destroyed.

The only real threats are the price of oil & biological. One is fairly easy to deal with (oil price) and the other is not (see news about tainted food from China, bird flu etc).

The old way of doing things is dead & the new way hasn`t been accepted yet. We are between eras & need real leadership and not the FauxNoise kind.

We are ALL at risk.

"We are accustomed to the new land yet attached to the old country" - anon

The world's largest economic and military power is never going to "leave alone" a region where the world's most important (economically) natural resource is most greatly concentrated. It has never happened, and it never will. Short of total war, The United States will be aligned with some political entity or entities in the Persian Gulf to assure the extraction of oil. The question is how to do it without becoming a target of resentment of large elements of the population of the region, and that is hard to do as long as the Persian Gulf is primariy despotically ruled.

Sure, the United States might have been better off a long time ago if it had ended all aid to Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinians, but the emphasis shoud be on "might have". If open war had been the result, with the Israelis unchecked this time, unlike after their recovery fron the initial debacle in the Yom Kippur war, things might have gotten very nasty indeed for U.S. interests.

My insightful analysis is that the entire strategic situation is a helluva mess, has been a helluva mess for a long time, and is likely to remain so for a long time, with a very real chance that it will get much, much, worse. And that there may not have been a damned thing the United States could have done about it in the past, or can do abut it in the future. The people of the region are not instruments that the people of the United States can control, but that won't lessen our demand for the black stuff one single bit.

There are tons of Muslims outside the Middle East and they care.

"and need real leadership"

As the hours count down to the Flying Dumbos swirling around the Air Force One at Ron's Bemusement Center.

"My insightful analysis" - Geez, and we get it for Free, to boot. Thanks, Will

> The world's largest economic and military
> power is never going to "leave alone" a region
> where the world's most important (economically)
> natural resource is most greatly concentrated. It
> has never happened, and it never will. Short of
> total war, The United States will be aligned with
> some political entity or entities in the Persian
> Gulf to assure the extraction of oil.

The oil is going to go away sooner or later anyway, and personally I am starting to think that will be "sooner". So we can either involve ourselves in an apocalyptic struggle for the last million barrels of oil, or we can take our clue from the Danish and start transforming our economy NOW to one that doesn't need any more oil than we can buy from Canada.

The choice is ours. With the Republicans in control (and the evangelicals leading White House bible studies) I fear I know which choice we will make.

Cranky

Energy independence is key.
I don't know if "Ignore the Middle East and it will go away" is the correct and pragmatic policy, but the way things are going I sure would like to try it!
They got along with out us before oil.

Short of total war, The United States will be aligned with some political entity or entities in the Persian Gulf to assure the extraction of oil.

Um, no. The value of the oil ensures its extraction, pretty much independently of anything anyone outside does short of nuking the region into oblivion to prevent the oil from being extracted.

The US doesn't have to be politically allied to anyone in the region to even to ensure access to the oil, either, as long as it is (a) willing to pay market prices, and (b) not directly antagonistic to the suppliers.

> So in the end, all that's left is nuclear and
> biological weapons. If you believe those don't
> pose a serious threat over the next few decades,
> then Luttwak is probably right that we could
> ignore the Middle East if we wanted to. But if you
> believe they do pose a threat, then figuring out
> a way to reduce Arab resentment of the West
> suddenly seems pretty important.

Setting aside the question of whether it is the presence of the United States that _causes_ the resentment, it is now the job of the United States to /police the entire Middle East/? Who pray tell gave us that job? In which Presidential election was this policy debated, including its long-term costs both monetary and moral? Given that our entire armed forces, the most powerful in the world, cannot keep order in Iraq, how exactly are we going to accomplish this neocon wet dream?

Cranky

Hmm, Middle East experts are unfailingly wrong eh? Well I guess that depends on which experts you’re talking about. Now no mater how much one knows, the future is unpredictable to a certain extent. No one will bat 1000. But maybe Mr. Luttwak should look around and try to find experts who are usually right. Juan Cole springs to mind. How often was he right? I’d say far more than 50%.

Perhaps the problem isn’t some list of “mistakes� that an unnamed group of “middle east experts� makes, but the fact that he’s consulting the wrong experts (or perhaps the “experts� he consults are not such at all).

Luttwak's argument about oil makes a typical error. Oil is a commodity bought and sold on a world market. Even if we didn't buy a drop of oil from the Middle East, the market price we pay for oil would be subject to shocks from that region. Hence, our interest in the stability of the Middle East stems from our dependency on oil, not our dependency on Middle Eastern oil.

Edward Luttwak is usually wrong, so go figure.

This is the problem:

There is absolutely no moral equivalence between

(a) anti-imperial leftists and

(c) barroom hawks who think we should just let the ragheads kill each other off.

The little regard that the moderates have for the anti-imperialism is largely responsible for the current fiasco.

Now, if only Isreal would behave like Taiwan, and we could say that we're staying out, but will defend Isreal if needed, and then tell Isreal that there are a list of things they better not do or the deal is off. Posted by: peejay (formerly formerly peejay) on May 3, 2007 at 3:24 PM

Ding! Ding! Ding!

I think we have a winner here. I honestly don't see why Israel can't defend itself. There's no Arab nation or combination of Arab nations that could honestly pose a real military threat to them.

Yes, and not being directly antagonistic with a trading partner is to be aligned with the trading partner. Hence the word "partner".

Thirdpaul, I hope the sarcasm didn't escape you.

Mending fences with the Middle East is possible, but it takes a lot of patience plus acqusition of the idea that not only Americans are patriots. Leaving other nations to their own devices is always good foreign policy, but when you're an oil addict, it's just impossible (just ask any junky oil, heroine or whatever). So it's clear what's to be done, just who's gonna do it?

Luttwak's advice: the hell with them. Just leave the Middle East alone and direct our attention to areas of the world that actually matter.

Exactly.

Historically, Israel was only a strategic concern, and then really not that significant a one after about 1975, vis-a-vis the mistaken impression that the Soviets were making long term gains in the region. Reduce our massive handouts to Israel, and it is left with two choice since we ultimately subsidize its belligerence: Israel can broker an honest peace with the Palestinians by withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders or it can continue to be on a permanent war footing.

Oil is still important, but that's true for the whole world. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, you'd see the price of gas more or less what it was in 2002. Oil is a global commodity that does no good for the Arab states producing it unless they sell it.

If we spent the money we've pissed away on the Iraq war for public transportation and energy conservation measures, particularly on current alternative energy options and research for future options, we would have saved money and given the economy a huge Keyensian goose building all manner of transportation and energy production infrastructure.

We will never be bosom buddies with anyone, including the increasingly conservative Israel, in the ME. So there is no point in being involved in the region to the extent we have been for the last four years or so.

Ah, this sort of discussion always brings out the bigots, don't it?
Yes, if we would just give in and stop supporting Israel, the Muslim world would love us.
BS.
B...S.
Not only would they not love us, but we'd be betraying our fundamental values by turning our back on Israel.
Not that that would bother Jim W. - he's your classic schoolyard bully appeaser - just give the bully what he wants and everybody's happy - well, except the victims of the bully.

We're spending something like a trillion dollars on the Iraq folly. If we'd spent a fraction of that on research toward alternative sources of energy, we wouldn't need their oil, and the problem would be solved . . .

So there is no point in being involved in the region to the extent we have been for the last four years or so. Posted by: JeffII

That would be forty years.

"And, of course, we would leave them alone if it weren't for all that lovely oil, wouldn't we?"

Probably, though God seems to hang out in the Middle East a lot. His choosing that area and not somewhere nicer - Phuket comes to mind, or Hawaii - gives me serious doubts about his judgement.

"Ah, this sort of discussion always brings out the bigots, don't it?
Yes, if we would just give in and stop supporting Israel, the Muslim world would love us.
BS."

Love us? No. Loving us was never the issue. We want them to stop *hating* us. And yes cutting off Israel from foreign aide it has no right to anyway (since it's a developed first world belligerent nation) would go a long ways toward ending the hatred.

JeffII, do you really actually believe that the money spent on the Iraq war, if instead spent on public transportation and state directed research, would have made a condiderable difference on oil demand in the U.S.?

Joergan, one can't "leave people to their own devices" when one considers it critical that those people facilitate the extraction of what lies under their feet. One will inevitably align with subsets of those people who can best or most reliably achieve that facilitation. When such a people as a whole are governed without their regular consent, one ends up being aligned with a subset which carries with it unfortunate associations. This is especially true when the people as a whole are of a religion that has been, with varying degrees of intensity, in conlict with the rest of the world for well over a thousand years.

Arabs are not resentful of the West. They resent other states sending military forces into occupy their countries. They resent corporations from other countries setting up lucrative deals for natural resources that leave little for the indigenous people. They resent other nations supporting corrupt dictators who help set up lucrative resource deals for themselves and for their foreign partners. They resent having their traditions and culture denounced by foreigns who invade their countries to get sweetheart oil deals. They resent the treatment of the Palestinian people. If the Chinese invaded Iraq or supported Israel unconditionally they would be disliked even though they promised the shining light of Confucian civilization.

> the market price we pay for oil would be
> subject to shocks from that region. Hence,
> our interest in the stability of the
> Middle East

The entire United States Army hasn't been able to keep one set of oilfields and _one_ pipeline operating in the face of indigenous resistance. But the US is going to bring "stability" to the whole Middle East? Do explain how, please.

Cranky

JeffII -

Reduce our massive handouts to Israel, and it is left with two choice since we ultimately subsidize its belligerence: Israel can broker an honest peace with the Palestinians by withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders or it can continue to be on a permanent war footing.

Israel doesn't have to do any of those things:

Option 3: Without the money that is a ultimately a subsidy for Israel's good behavior, Israel gets tough with the Palestinians, causing Arab outrage at the U.S. for not stopping Israel.

Option 4: Israel tries to make up the lost subsidy money by selling $6B a year in weapons technology and research to the Chinese, something Washington is currently prohibiting, causing US taxpayers to have to spend 10x the current $6B subsidy on new weapons systems to stay ahead of the Chinese, not to mention possibly causing Japan to go nuclear, Southeast Asia to destabilize, or any number of other unpleasant realities.

You remind me of another person who wanted try a unilateral "get tough" policy in the middle east without thinking through the consequences... and I'm sure your idea will work out just about as well as Bush's did.

JeffII, do you really actually believe that the money spent on the Iraq war, if instead spent on public transportation and state directed research, would have made a condiderable (sic) difference on oil demand in the U.S.? Posted by: Will Allen

No. But I think it would make considerable difference. That's why I wrote that.

Next dumb question.

Every oil analyst on the planet agrees that oil reserves are falling fastest outside the Middle East, and that 20 years from now our dependence on Middle Eastern oil will be higher than it is today, not lower. All the pandering to all the corn farmers in all of Iowa isn't going to change that.

Well, investment in biofuels in all the states will change a great deal in 20 years, unless all present trends stop dead in their tracks.

the journal Science had a nice review in its 9 February issue, volume 315 beginning p. 781. In 20 years, biofuels production can increase by a factor of 1,000; wind-produced electricity the same; and solar generated electricity by maybe 100. That's with what's known now. Limits will be encountered before those multiplicities are realized, but the progress is broad in terms of technologies and is international in scope. That's without reckoning with nuclear, American coal, and Rocky Mountain shale.

You really need to end this fixation with oil, and invest your attention, energies, and money in the great variety of alternatives.

Mind, I wouldn't have the same opinion exactly if the market in oil were truly a free market. But there are huge external costs born by society that are not included in the price of fuel, even taking into account today's high prices.

As for "all oil analysts", you need to broaden your perspective a bit. Among all energy analysts there is considerable variety of opinion about what is achievable in the upcoming 20 years.

It's not like we can't afford it. The $120B bill just vetoed by Pres bush had $40B in projects for other stuff that would buy a great deal of synfuels generating capacity; not to mention the $80B for the war itself. In another thread today cmdicely wrote of the investment potential for the savings if we brought the troops home today; a few months ago Secular Animist directed our attention to a web site devoted to a new "Apollo Project" dedicated to domestic energy production.

The big question is: how?

Take their money away from them and then bomb their weapons manufacturing facilities. It won't matter if some of them continue to resent us. We'll share with those who don't, as in Dubai.

I am a (cultural/secular) Jew - and I resent every penny of my tax dollars that goes to prop up Israel. With friends like that...

(Oh, and if you want to give a deserved Medal of Freedom to an intel operative - give it to Bobby Ray Inman for being the only person in the entire service to tell the Mossad to get bent 20 years ago.)

Re: the ragheads comment. Come on Kevin. There are some of us who have legitimate concerns about the amount of attention the Middle East gets without being racists, especially when you see how little attention in the media gets directed towards our nearest neighbors unless their citizens are trying to flee across the border to better their lives, they have a bombastic gasbag sitting on top of a lot of oil, they export stuff that our citizens stick up their noses or they comprise a large voting bloc in, say, Miami.

While I think there are active things we could do to make them like us better, there are a hell of a lot of active things we do now and have done in the past that make them hate us more.

"They" are not all the same. Within every nation there are some, in unknown numbers, who look to us to save them from their government. So it gets more complicated than just the oil. Nevertheless, we would do well to increase our own fuel supplies.

A bigger question arises when you think of the amount of oil that we EAT. The fertilizer that grows the food, the insecticides that keep it free of disease and decay, and the plastics we wrap it in, serve it on, and eat or drink it with also come from oil.

We may have to stop burning the stuff so that we have enough for those other purposes.

Not to mention the oil that we wear (synthetic fabrics and the dyes that color them), drive/play with (plastics again), or use to keep ourselves healthy (medicines). The PC that I'm writing this on and the one that you're reading it from are also mostly processed oil (or coal).

They like their resentments. So let India and China take over the Middle East - Arab resentment of the East will go up, Arab resentment of the West will go down.

If it were only about the oil, the nuclear option is assuredly better, since it leaves the oil in place. It is, however, hell on the drilling rigs, pumping stations, gathering lines, steam injection units, loading platforms, wharves, harbors, etc. You know, all the equipment to actually get the oil delivered where it's needed or desired. Hmm, maybe something else?

Diplomacy, perhaps?

Yeeah, Bolton's not doing anything but think tanking now, let's get hm over there.

Power, Faith and Fantasy by Oren describes how the US has been involved in the Middle East since our inception. We aren't leaving until religion stops driving people to hate each other because they don't worship God the same way. Oddly, it's the same God. Hitchens is right (for once).

Ignoring any portion of the global economy or international political relations is probably a bad idea. But then again, banging your head against a wall is also ill-advised.

We should back off from the Middle East for the moment and then, after the dust settles a bit, try a different approach (how about diplomacy) to promoting US interests in the region.

We should back off from the Middle East for the moment and then, after the dust settles a bit, try a different approach (how about diplomacy) to promoting US interests in the region. Posted by: Stiff Mittens

What "interests" do we have in the region? Israel isn't a "interest" it's a one-hundred fucking ton(ne) millstone around our neck.

Oil isn't a regional "interest" because we can buy that, and actually do on the whole, in the world market. Most of the oil consumed in the U.S. doesn't come from the ME.

Look, Kevin, it's simple: If Iraq falls, the rest of the middle east will fall just like . . .

. . . wait for it . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

dominoes.

Option 3: Without the money that is a ultimately a subsidy for Israel's good behavior,

This premise is flawed: US aid is not, either in theory or in practice, preconditioned on Israel's "good behavior" toward the Palestinians, and thus does nothing to encourage it.

Conservatives and liberal hawks were wrong about withdrawal from Vietnam and they are wrong about withdrawal from Iraq.

Their chicken little rants about the catastrophe awaiting the bringing home of the troops has been played before and cost the lives of thousands of US troops for naught.

And they will continue to cry their little cries just so they can save face, no matter how much harm and hurt their policies put on American families and this country's integrity, world-standing, and safety.

It is cliche, but it is true: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and those who did not learn from Vietnam (conservatives and liberal war hawks and Kevin) are doomed to repeat the learning of those lessons in Iraq.

Unfortunately, they are going to drag us along.

Just. Get. Out.

Now.

Option 4: Israel tries to make up the lost subsidy money by selling $6B a year in weapons technology and research to the Chinese, something Washington is currently prohibiting,

This is also incorrect. While Israel is cancelling (and compensating China for the cancellation of) one deal, the agreement with the US on future deals "doesn't create any veto power for the United States", per the Pentagon. So the US hasn't prohibited anything.

JeffII, I just wanted to make sure you weren't drunk. Also, pointing out typing errors is highly correlated with well-reasoned analysis. Finally, are you typically such an asshole when someone asks you a relatively innocuous question?

Nice to see you grasp the implications of the fungibility of oil as well.

Will Allen: Finally, are you typically such an asshole when someone asks you a relatively innocuous question?

Are you?

Finally, are you typically such an asshole when someone asks you a relatively innocuous question?
Posted by: Will Alen

Yes. Next dumb question.

anonymous, were the predictions of a bloodbath in Southeast Asia incorrect? Was the Democratic candidate for President in 1972, the favored candidate of anti-war Democrats, George McGovern, correct, when he said from the well of the Senate, when it was debated whether to cut off aid to Cambodia's Lon Nol government...

``The growing hysteria of the administration's posture on Cambodia, seems to me to reflect a determined refusal to consider what the fall of the existing government in Phnom Penh would actually mean. . . . We should be able to see that the kind of government which would succeed Lon Nol's forces would most likely be a government . . . run by some of the best-educated, most able intellectuals in Cambodia.''

I wouldn't say that any part of the political spectrum has much to brag about regarding their ability to forsee the future.

Joergan, one can't "leave people to their own devices" when one considers it critical that those people facilitate the extraction of what lies under their feet.

Given the rather intense economic incentive that exists to extract oil, the thought that the US needs to actively intervene to guarantee that the people sitting on oil actually extract it seems to either suggest a rather ridiculously low opinion of the intelligence of the people in the region, or a similarly ridiculously high opinion of their inclination to defer gratification.

As long as there are buyers, whoever sits on the oil in the Middle East is going to keep pumping it out and selling it.

No, ex-liberal, I try to avoid hostile invective until the person I am conversing with demonstrates that this is his or her preferred type of rhetoric. JeffII clearly has shown that he wants to an asshole, and clarity is usually appreciated.

Attack Iraq fell off the wall. Attack Iraq had a great fall. And all of King George's forces and all of King George's spin can't put Attack Iraq back together again.

Will Allen: . . . were the predictions of a bloodbath in Southeast Asia incorrect?

I said nothing about the predictions of catastrophe being incorrect.

Read more closely.

The catastrophe was inevitable from the moment of intervention.

Five years more, ten years more, would not have mattered. Eventually, the US would have had to leave Vietnam, as it must leave Iraq, and catastrophe would still have fallen and will still fall. But the delay costs and will cost thousands of more American deaths for naught. Not one bit of that catastrophe was mitigated by being in Vietnam 10 years (or however long it actually was) instead of 5. And no matter how much longer US troops are in Iraq, when we leave whatever would occur now will occur then. Despite the abundant claims of the administration to the contrary (over and over for the past four years), no progress has been made in lessening the volatility of the situation in Iraq and no greater progress will be made if we stay another five years or ten years.

Just ask the Israelis after 40 years how much progress they have made in stamping out Hamas and ilk.

Only absolute hubris would allow one to conclude that the US can exercise the level of control over events in the Middle East that King George proposes he can.

Wow, a lot of paleocon Israel-haters around here.

This is where the Far Left and the Far Right meet (joyfully) these days - at the intersection of Israel-hatred.

Never mind that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, the only country that treats women (and gays, for that matter) as human beings.

Screw Israel, right?

No, screw you.

cmdicely, last week the House of Saud stopped a plot to sabotage their extraction facilities, a plot pursued not by outside interests, but residents of the country. There are indeed people in the region who are quite willing to defer such gratifcation afforded by oil extraction. Because we greatly desire that extraction, we are forced into alignment with the House of Saud, and in opposition to whatever indigneous forces which exist that oppose the House of Saud. Being even in tacit alliance with the House of Saud carries significant consequences.

Dan: Never mind that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, the only country that treats women (and gays, for that matter) as human beings.

Well, democracy unless you are a Palestinian whose land a settler wants.

Of course, the Israelis have taken virtually all Palestinian lands (or being given them by the British who stole them from the Palestinians) don't have much land to take any more.

Nevermind also that Israel routinely sabotages American interests in the region, that its allies in the US fomented the Iraq War primarily with the (wrongheaded) intent to provide more protection for Israel instead of furthering US interests, and that Israel has never returned to the US even a fraction of the benefits this country has provided to Israel or offered apologies for the harm that Americans have endured as a result of American support for Israel.

Like with Bush, loyalty with Israel is a one-way street.

Anonymous, you wrote...

"Conservatives and liberal hawks were wrong about withdrawal from Vietnam and they are wrong about withdrawal from Iraq."

One of the things predicted by conservatives and liberal hawks regarding withdrawal from Vietnam, and Indochina in general, was a bloodbath of epic proportion. People like McGovern disputed that prediction, and people like McGovern were wrong.

Your history of Indochina is inaccurate. The non-communist governments did not fall with the withdrawal of American troops, but rather with the cutoff of American military aid. No, it can't be proven that extending the aid would have prevented the communist victories, but it simply is innacurate to imply that the withdrawal of American troops was all that was required to ensure an eventual communist victory.

I want Israel to continue to exist - it keeps my Uncle Myron and Aunt Sylvia as far from me as they can possible be.

Seriously - the country needs to stop taking for granted the unquestioned support of the U.S. and start trying to get along with the neighbors. Ohlmert's rush to war is hopefully going to cost the prick his job.

Sharon was the Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla.

The USS Liberty.

The feckless traitor Pollard.

We are not talking about a shrinking violet, unable to take care of herself. We are talking about a punk, taunting the rest of the class while standing behind the teacher.

Eventually school lets out, and someone gets their ass kicked by the flagpole. That's the way of the world, and if Israel checks it's watch, it's almost time for last bell.

Ex-liberal, your tone, along with your twisting of the truth, forces me to state the obvious.

You aren't exactly a fan of the chosen people.

Criticizing Israel, even vehemently, is one thing - but denying the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland free from persecution is another.
You fall into the latter category, obviously, and so, I'm sorry to say, you are "that word".
I won't say the word.
You know the word.

Never mind that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East

That is almost as funny as the notion that Palestine is a "Land without people for a people without land."

If you repeat a lie long enough, you might get most people to believe it (including yourself I imagine) but it won't make it any more true.

Now, don't let the door hit your bigoted Zionist ass on the way out of here.

"Sharon was the Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla.

The USS Liberty.

The feckless traitor Pollard."

Wow, where do you get your talking points, davidduke.com?

Pretty much identical.

What makes the alliance with the House of Saud, however necessary it's deemed, so complex, is that those allies are the source of our enemy. Wahhabism as a sect of Islam doesn't exist in isolation from the Saudis, but is fundamentally part of Saud.
with the al-Saud torn on the one hand between the jihad-inspired Wahhabi religious establishment needed to impose order at home and, on the other, a Western colonial power the Wahhabis saw as their eternal enemy, but which Ibn Saud recognized as the guarantors of his own security, and therefore survival.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC01Ak02.html

Well, BGRS, you neglect the possibility that Israel doesn't just engage in an ass-kicking itself, but goes quite a bit further, and turns into a Columbine-style massacre. I'm sympathetic to the notion that the U.S. should have ended all aid to all entities in that conflict some time ago. I do think it has rather more complex possibilities than is commony acknowledged.

Wow, where do you get your talking points, davidduke.com?

Uh oh.... Jew fight!

Exactly, TJM. We are forced into an alliance with a government which itself supports an extraordinarily hostile and violent ideology; hostile and violent to the United States.

Will Allen: One of the things predicted by conservatives and liberal hawks regarding withdrawal from Vietnam, and Indochina in general, was a bloodbath of epic proportion. People like McGovern disputed that prediction, and people like McGovern were wrong.

And I never wrote that they were wrong about those predictions.

As usual, you deliberately read other's comments through the bias of your belief in your own superiority.

Your history of Indochina is inaccurate. The non-communist governments did not fall with the withdrawal of American troops, but rather with the cutoff of American military aid. No, it can't be proven that extending the aid would have prevented the communist victories, but it simply is innacurate to imply that the withdrawal of American troops was all that was required to ensure an eventual communist victory.

I wrote nothing about governments falling.

Again, quit putting words into my words.

Conservatives have long-claimed that withdrawal of American troops led to a blood bath of retaliation against non-communist individuals in Vietnam.

They exaggerate the effect of American troops leaving, since they always fail to subtract from those numbers the individuals who would have died by continued violence in the war itself.

In any event, I do not dispute that a lot of killing, bloodbath if you will or catastrophe, took place after American troops left.

Conservatives link that to the PREMATURE withdrawal of American troops, just like they (and Bush) are linking it to the PREMATURE withdrawal of American troops in Iraq.

If that isn't clear enough for you, then you are beyond enlightenment and you may return to trading insults with JeffII.

I imagine there's a sizable coalition of (a) anti-imperial leftists, (b) heartland isolationists, and (c) barroom hawks who think we should just let the ragheads kill each other off

We now know what Mr. Drum thinks of people who think the US should not interfere in the Middle East.

What should we call the Americans who think it is OK for the US to use its wealth and military might to interfere with nations and peoples of the Middle East, for whatever reasons?

Moderate murderers.

cmdicely, last week the House of Saud stopped a plot to sabotage their extraction facilities, a plot pursued not by outside interests, but residents of the country.

Uh, yeah. Residents that planned to overthrow the unpopular dictatorship and replace it with a different dictatorship, which would then fund itself by pumping and selling oil, just like everyone else in the region.

One of the main things that make supporters of the would-be dictators oppose the current dictators, and which makes them willing to disrupt the pumping of oil to displace them, is the involvement of the US in the region.

Rather than ensuring the extraction of oil, our involvement in the region is one of the major sources of threats to that extraction.

There are indeed people in the region who are quite willing to defer such gratifcation afforded by oil extraction.

There are certainly people who are unhappy with who benefits from oil extraction, are problem which is not at all alleviated by our involvement in the region.

Because we greatly desire that extraction, we are forced into alignment with the House of Saud, and in opposition to whatever indigneous forces which exist that oppose the House of Saud.

Even from the perspective of a desire for oil extraction, that's a rather costly and short-sighted approach. But then, given how many of our leaders have entanglements with the House of Saud that go far beyond any public interest in the US, its not surprising that our support for the House of Saud is irrational from the perspective of public interest.

Being even in tacit alliance with the House of Saud carries significant consequences.

Quite. That's not in dispute. What is in dispute is the necessity of such an alliance, particularly, the idea that our involvement in the region is necessary to ensure that oil is extracted.

Just a realist and not a fluffer and apologist on matters of foreign policy. Sorry if that disappoints, and if I'm not on message as a good jew should be.

Pollard is a traitor and should have hung.

The Liberty should have been the end of American support for Israel.

Talking point that, Schmendrick.

Disputo - if you are going to channel Cartman, it should be spelled J-O-O...:)

Anonymous, you did not write that conservatives and liberal hawks were wrong about some things regarding withdrawal from Vietnam, but rather that they were simply wrong. If you are now saying that they were indeed right about some things, and those that oppsed them were wrong about some things, fine.

Dan: . . . but denying the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland free from persecution is another.

A dubious conclusion at best.

Are you American?

Are you denying the "right" of Native Americans to have a homeland free from the persecution of another?

Don't be a dip.

Recognizing that Israel stole its country is not an argument that it must be given back any more than recognizing that Americans stole land from the natives is an argument that it must now be given back.

Israel's existence is assured.

But there are plenty of displaced or un-free peoples in the world (Turkish Kurds) who deserve no less than the Jews to have a homeland free from oppression.

But no one is stealing somebody else's homeland to give them that.

Moreover, the tone of YOUR response shows that you think that God has given Israel some "right" to a particular plot of land which is exactly what any other Islamic zealots are going to argue and which means perpetual war, since if it is okay for Israel to steal (and kill) to occupy land on the basis of a god-given right, then one cannot criticize the Palestinians for trying to do the same.

Israel was a mistake. Morally, legally.

But it is done and it was no crime of the current inhabitants any more than the theft of Native American lands was a crime of the current citizens of the US.

Now, the Palestinians need to be given the same, while preserving Israel and Israel (and its supporters) need to recognize and acknowledge that theft was theft.

And I know what you are and I will say it: a fascist. Someone whose nationalism and love of his own race/ethnicity trumps all else and regulates all others to inferior status, full of improper motives and vile values.

And we know where we've seen that before, which makes it all the more distrubing.

Will Allen: Anonymous, you did not write that conservatives and liberal hawks were wrong about some things regarding withdrawal from Vietnam, but rather that they were simply wrong. If you are now saying that they were indeed right about some things, and those that oppsed them were wrong about some things, fine.

A schmuck, as usual, who can't read in context, but must take single sentences out and imbue them with his own prejudices and preconceptions.

Ah, well, so be it.

You wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy, and the pig likes it.

So, I decline to wrestle any more.

I'm dirty enough as it is from the venture so far.

But it is done and it was no crime of the current inhabitants

Plenty of the 48ers are still around. Just saying.

cmdicely, if you think the American electorate, and the electorate of all the oil consuming democracies, are going to be willing to endure the economic dislocation involved in having the House of Saud violently overthrown, perhaps including infrastructure damage which greatly hampers the flow of oil for several months, you are mistaken. Every democratic government of an oil consuming nation has a strong alliance, if only tacitly, with the House of Saud, and will continue to have such an alliance, because stopping the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia for even a short time likely entails those politicians losing elections. The job of a politician, first and formost, is to win elections, and it is very hard for an incumbent politician in an oil importing democracy to win an election if the oil from Saudi Arabia is halted, even if only temporarily.

Anonymous, I quoted the entire one sentence paragragh, and the rest of the post doesn't change the context of the first sentence.

An ass, as usual, who employs words sloppily, and then becomes indignant when the inaccurate nature of an assertion is pointed out.

Oh well, engage in contact with an ass, and what can you expect?

Eventually school lets out, and someone gets their ass kicked by the flagpole. That's the way of the world, and if Israel checks it's watch, it's almost time for last bell. Posted by: Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.)

LOL! Oh, you self-hating Jew, you! Or so some of the neocon scum would say.

At our school the ass-kicking would take place at the bike racks.

Residents that planned to overthrow the unpopular dictatorship and replace it with a different dictatorship

It is possible the Saudis arrested recently were attempting to create another dictatorship, but it is also possible they were going to create a Saudi democracy. Either way, they are just heaps of writhing flesh now, and that pleases President George W. Bush and Prince Bandahar.

I'm a Navy brat, so the flagpole has significance. (And so does the USS Liberty!)

cmdicely, if you think the American electorate, and the electorate of all the oil consuming democracies, are going to be willing to endure the economic dislocation involved in having the House of Saud violently overthrown, perhaps including infrastructure damage which greatly hampers the flow of oil for several months, you are mistaken.

Granting, arguendo, that that is the case, so what? Where did I say that I thought anything like that?

I did say that US involvement in the region is the impetus behind many of the threats to oil extraction.

I did not say that the US electorate desired those threats. Indeed, I said that the policies pursued by US leaders which produced those threats were pursued in pursuit of private interests at odds with the public interest.

Every democratic government of an oil consuming nation has a strong alliance, if only tacitly, with the House of Saud, and will continue to have such an alliance, because stopping the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia for even a short time likely entails those politicians losing elections. The job of a politician, first and formost, is to win elections, and it is very hard for an incumbent politician in an oil importing democracy to win an election if the oil from Saudi Arabia is halted, even if only temporarily.

These two sentences together seem to rely on the unstated premise that every democracy is a net oil importer. This is not correct.

Yes, I should have wrote "oil importing" in both instances, instead of "oil consuming" in one instance. You are wrong, however, if you mean to say that the U.S. public, in general, does not support the House of Saud, and does not desire to have it's elected officials work to ensure that the House of Saud remains in power. Above all else, the American electorate demands that gasoline prices, and prices of other oil-derived products, avoid large spikes. Thus American politicians will work to see that the House of Saud remains in power, rather than risk a disruption, even if only temporary.

You are wrong, however, if you mean to say that the U.S. public, in general, does not support the House of Saud, and does not desire to have it's elected officials work to ensure that the House of Saud remains in power.

I suppose you can point to the opinion polls showing US popular support for the House of Saud to support this claim but were just too lazy to bother, but I don't see why you would even bother making the claim in the first place; had I meant to say that, no doubt I would have said that or at least something from which that could have been reasonably inferred, which I did not. You seem to determined to keep rebutting points no one is arguing for, and indeed the same points which it has been repeatedly pointed out to you that no one is arguing for.

Again, what I said is that US policy toward the Middle East is the proximate cause to many of the threatened (and actual) disruptions to oil extraction in the region, and is not at all rationally justifiable on the basis of a desire to see the oil extracted. (It is, of course, rationally justifiable on the basis of a desire to control who benefits from whatever extraction of oil occurs, but that wasn't the justification you offered.)

You are wrong, however, if you mean to say that the U.S. public, in general, does not support the House of Saud, and does not desire to have it's elected officials work to ensure that the House of Saud remains in power.

WTF? The U.S. public doesn't know the House of Saud from the Waffle House.

Above all else, the American electorate demands that gasoline prices, and prices of other oil-derived products, avoid large spikes.

You mean like 50 cents a gallon that's occurred in the last two or three weeks? I don't think this has anything to do with the House of Saud.

Thus American politicians will work to see that the House of Saud remains in power, rather than risk a disruption, even if only temporary. Posted by: Will Allen

While this may be true, it has fuck all to do with world oil supplies. It's not 1973 anymore. Most of the members of OPEC cheat on a regular basis. Venezuela, where the U.S. gets the majority of its oil, hates us. However, that doesn't stop them from selling to us or, more importantly, from selling their product into the world market. The House of Saud does not control the world market for oil.

To avoid any possible confusion, the poster who calls herself/himself "ex-liberal" does not speak for me in any way.

I would request that "ex-liberal" find some alternative screen name in order to avoid confusion.

Now, who is messin' with FAUX? Almost as bad as him getting run over by Browne Greene or Charlie O'Reilly. Pity

Will Allen: Exactly, TJM. We are forced into an alliance with a government which itself supports an extraordinarily hostile and violent ideology; hostile and violent to the United States.

We are not forced. Rather, it was a choice that we have made and need to extricate ourselves from. I think that if Americans could be made to accept and understand the full costs of "cheap" Middle Eastern oil they would be willing to accept higher oil prices as a cost of getting out of there. If gasoline at $5 per gal were the only cost of withdrawing from Iraq, I think America would do it tomorrow. Especially if voters could see the excess being invested in new energy developments in their congressional districts.

I do agree with you that there are people in each of the Islamic oil producing natiions who want to destroy the oil wells and piplines and give up the "un-Islamic" wealth. For them it isn't a matter of who benefits from the oil sales, but that they see all proceeds, even abundant medical care, as evil. Besides that, they were slovenly about re-investing their proceeds in their own infrastructure.

cmdicely, you argued that the people who occupy the Saudi Peninsula would be too unwilling to defer gratification to suffer a break in oil extraction. This is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether particular factions, with the motivation and means to topple the House of Saud, are willing to defer such gratification. They plainly are. A change in U.S. policy would not change the motivation and means of these factions.

The American electorate would be completely (follow carefully, JeffII) unwilling to endure the sort of price spikes (50 cents? HA!) that would entail even a temporary stoppage in Saudi extraction, thus American politicians are forced into a position where the House of Saud must be supported, lest the factions who are willing to defer gratification, and whose motivations and means to topple the House of Saud are NOT going to decline with a change in U.S. policy, accomplish their goals.

Follow very carefully Jeff. It does not matter a whit where hydrocarbon molecules that you put into the tank of your car come from. What matter is the total number of hydrocrabon molecules on the world market. If Saudi production stops, even for a few weeks, prices spike, much, much, more than fifty cents. The American electorate becomes very unhappy. If Saudi production stops for a few months, the American electorate becomes even more unhappy. American politicians, of whatever party, understand the politics of gas prices. Go ask Jimmy Carter. The American people do not need to know the House of Saud from the Waffle House. All they need to know, in order to support the House of Saud, is that they aren't going to be happy when the price of gasoline skyrockets, and American politicians, whose most important job is to win elections, will do the rest.

Matthew you may think that, and you may be right. People who have spent their adult lives building a political career, however, are aware, for instance, of how movement in Presedential popularity polls, through several adminstrations, have correlated with the rise and fall of gas prices. We may want our elected officials to be less risk averse, in terms of protecting their careers, in order to promote the common good, but there is very slight evidence that we have any reasonable expectation of that development.

> The American electorate would be completely
> (follow carefully, JeffII) unwilling to endure
> the sort of price spikes (50 cents? HA!) that
> would entail even a temporary stoppage in Saudi
> extraction, thus American politicians are forced
> into a position where the House of Saud must be
> supported

That is unfortunate, because realistically there is very little the United States, or even the House of Saud, can do if the indigenous population (or the regional population) of Saudi Arabia decides in favor of civil unrest. In fact I would say the chances that there WILL be serious civil unrest in Saudi Arabia in the next 10 years are 67% or higher.

So if the US population is "unwilling" to accept the consequences it had better prepare to be disappointed.

Cranky

> All they need to know, in order to support the
> House of Saud, is that they aren't going to be
> happy when the price of gasoline skyrockets, and
> American politicians, whose most important job is
> to win elections, will do the rest.

Again: and that being what, _exactly_? The ENTIRE US Army is not sufficient to control Iraq alone, and is essentially worn out after 3 years of trying. What _exactly_ is the United States going to do?

Cranky

mhr: Experts are often wrong and experts are the life blood of liberalism.

Experts are more often right than non-experts, and non-experts are the lifeblood of conservatism.

Which pretty much tells us why Bush has mucked up everything he's touched and why he's been so wrong on Iraq.

Speaking of Israel, I read in the ChicagoTrib (I think) today that according to one poll, Olmert's approval rating is 3%, less than the margin of error.

Wow.

(Yeah, I know, even pointing that out makes me an antisemite....)

No, Lutwack is not really saying 'ignore the lot'. What he actually says is 'just keep doing what we have been doing and ignore the results'. Which is not the same at all.

What he means is 'let Israel do whatever it likes but also let them know that the US will absolutely back Israel regardless'. In other words, if Israel wants to massacre the Palestinians, fine. But the US will still give Israel a blank check for whatever it might need.

His opinions on the relative strength of Iran vs the US fleet are also of the unreconstructed imperialist goofball variety. The fact is that three carrier groups is not actually an invincible array of firepower against a country the size and population of France with an army roughly the size of France and the UK put together.

The Iranian surface to ship missiles may not be 98% effective as claimed but they have rather a lot of them and they only need to get lucky once to sink a capital ship. The geography of the gulf means that any ship in range of Tehran is no more than 20 miles from shore, probably less than 10 miles. The anti missile systems have less than a minute to react to an Iranian attack. The Iranians can launch more missiles than the Nimitz has anti-missile systems.

Does not sound like a gamble to be taken so lightly to me.

Oh, I agree completely, cranky, and the catalytic event which finally leads to the whole House of Saudi cards collapsing is probably something that won't be forseen. There was a terrific article in The Atlantic a few years back which discussed this (written by Robert Baer iirc), and it gave an exmaple of a sizable Saudi city, which due to the typical incompetence and corruption, had a large sewage resevior/dam built on ground much higher than a densely populated sector of the city, and, due to the typical incompetence and corruption, was in very poor repair. The author put forth a scenario where the dam breaks and drowns many thousands of Saudi subjects in a tidal wave of sewage, and what might follow from such a catastrophe. He imagined Saudi production going off line for many months.

Cranky, I wasn't making any predictions of success. I was making a prediction of American politicians fighting a rear guard action out of a desire to preserve their short term electoral prospects. That's what politicians do in a democracy the vast majority of the time. American foreign policy likely is going to be tied to the hip of the House of Saud in some manner for some time, and many bad things will likely flow from that. Also, before this is all layed at the feet of the current President, keep in mind that no American foreign policy initiative, probably including policy towards Israel, was more opposed by the House of Saud than the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. It was an extreme aberration, however.

I'm no naval expert, Phil, but the Persian Gulf does seem like a constrained space in which to operate carrier groups.

Disputo: (Yeah, I know, even pointing that out makes me an antisemite....)

At least according to Dan's Commandments . . .

Thou shalt not criticize Israel, lest ye be found an anti-semite.

mdicely, you argued that the people who occupy the Saudi Peninsula would be too unwilling to defer gratification to suffer a break in oil extraction.

No, I didn't. I'm pretty sure I never said anything about any mythical "Saudi Peninsula", for one thing.

This is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether particular factions, with the motivation and means to topple the House of Saud, are willing to defer such gratification. They plainly are.

It is not plain that any faction currently has the motivation and means to topple the House of Saud, period. Though, clearly, both the motivation and the means of opponents of that tyranny have been increasing, a trend in which, as I've stated, US policy in the region does nothing but reinforce.

A change in U.S. policy would not change the motivation and means of these factions.

Since US policy was responsible for spurring the creation of some of the factions opposed to the House of Saud, including al-Qaeda, I find your faith in the irrelevance of US policy to the capacities and desires of Middle Eastern factions amusing.

Also self-contradictory, since you seem to think that US policy is what prevents the House of Saud from being overthrown; if US policy did not affect either the means or motivations of the factions involved, that would be clearly impossible.

A Catholic friend tells me constantly that I am in danger of being excommunicated! (She thinks that joke never gets old. She is wrong.)

cmdicely: No, I didn't.

Don't bother.

You clearly weren't writing accurately and it's your fault that Will "misunderstood" you.

He also suffers from logic deficit syndrome.

Somehow, if you believe that a particular point of view is wrong, you must believe the political "opposite" view is right (e.g., if you believe conservatives and liberal war hawks are wrong about a particular thing, then you must believe that anti-war liberals are right about a different thing).

Gee whiz, cmdicely, perhaps you should inform all the geographicallly ignorant folks, at, say, the American Meteorological Society, that the Saudi Peninsula is "mythical".

Now that we have the typical pedantic nonsense dealt with, here is an exact quote..

"Given the rather intense economic incentive that exists to extract oil, the thought that the US needs to actively intervene to guarantee that the people sitting on oil actually extract it seems to either suggest a rather ridiculously low opinion of the intelligence of the people in the region, or a similarly ridiculously high opinion of their inclination to defer gratification."

...this statement is false, or more accurately, irrelevant, given that there are factions with the means, or working hard to obtain the means, with a reasonable chance of success, and the motivation to topple the House of Saud, who would be willing to defer the gratification of oil extraction. No they wouldn't be willing to defer it for years, but that is irrelevent, in terms of American electoral politics.

You now write...

"Since US policy was responsible for spurring the creation of some of the factions opposed to the House of Saud, including al-Qaeda, I find your faith in the irrelevance of US policy to the capacities and desires of Middle Eastern factions amusing.

Also self-contradictory, since you seem to think that US policy is what prevents the House of Saud from being overthrown; if US policy did not affect either the means or motivations of the factions involved, that would be clearly impossible."

....there are so many silly points here that it would be tedious (almost as tedious as explaining to a geograpically ignorant and predictably uselessly pedantic person that "Saudi Peninsula" is interchangeable with "Arabian Peninsula", meaning it quite nonsensical to employ the term "mythical Saudi Peninsula") to address them all, but pertaining to a few:

It is the mind of a child that would think that that the removal of a political catalyst would necessarily, or even likely, mean the end of the movement which the catalyst gave impetus to or started. History is so rife with examples of the opposite that it is embarassing to have discount this mythical belief.

Next, as to being self contradictory, as I noted above in another post above, I am most assuredly not saying the U.S. can successfully prop up the House of Saud. I am saying that the desire of American politicians to avoid any disruption in Saudi oil extraction, due to domestic electoral concerns, will cause them to closely align U.S. policy with the House of Saud, futilely, and with large negative consequences.

Anonymous, why does it bother you so when the meaning of the words you write are examined for their accuracy? You stated x was wrong about y. I provided an example of when x was right about y. You proceeded to go crazy, and then indulge in the typical name-calling. What is wrong with you?

Dan,

The fact that Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.) mentioned legitimate criticisms of Israel and you responded by effectively calling her a KKK member may be one of the most thoroughly stupid, asinine and silly comments I have ever read on a blog.

Randy Paul,

Hear! Hear!

And shouldn't there have some reparations for those "knicks" on the paint of the USS Liberty? Not to mention so many more "What were their names, boys, what were their names?"

Heads and careers should have fallen both in Washington as well as Tel Aviv.

Will Allen: You proceeded to go crazy, and then indulge in the typical name-calling.

It doesn't.

It bothers me when they are misrepresented as inaccurate, the proffered meaning arising merely from your desire that they mean something else that is convenient to your argument.

Why does it bother you that yours are?

For example, your inaccurate description of the Arabian Peninsula as the Saudi Peninsula.

Why do you use deprecatory terms "tedious" and "pedantic" to describe his corrections?

It's defensive and a mark of arrogance that people who correct you are being childish and unfair, but even your inane corrections, based on insertion of your own assumptions into other's writings, are to be treated as kind gifts of intellect?

Well, I guess I broke my own rule by wrestling with a pig and your rule by calling you one.

But I am not discouraged.

I find your tedious and pedantic debate techniques amusing and that justifies the time.

Will Allen: Matthew you may think that, and you may be right. People who have spent their adult lives building a political career, however, are aware, for instance, of how movement in Presedential popularity polls, through several adminstrations, have correlated with the rise and fall of gas prices.

Somebody wrote that democracies will always do the right thing but only as a last resort. Jimmy Carter removed price controls on gas and petroleum, and supplies increased and prices fell.

Now we have people dying in Iraq, killing in Iraq, the aircraft carriers (as you noted) sequestered in the Persian Gulf, and still we have high gasoline prices. This is the kind of situation, as in Carter's administration, where a strong push could make a difference. Somebody should tell the oil companies that they have to pay for the naval patrols in the Persian gulf, or we'll bring all our military forces out of there. Put that way, they'd probably rather invest in the U.S.

right now, no one is pushing really hard, but work is progressing anyway. Some in consequence of the 2005 law, some for other reasons, and some will follow on the Democrats' law, when they finally pass it.

Randy Paul: The fact that Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.) mentioned legitimate criticisms of Israel and you responded by effectively calling her a KKK member may be one of the most thoroughly stupid, asinine and silly comments I have ever read on a blog.

Exactly what would you expect from someone who refers to the Israelis as "the chosen people?"

Obviously as non-Jews, we must be lesser people, full of hatred and jealosy of those who are chosen and just as obviously chosen people can do no wrong and anyone who thinks they have done wrong is committing an offense against God himself.

Thank God most Israelis and most American Jews are not such fascists.

We'd be wise to take his advice. The Republicans' policies of naked aggression will increasingly lead to horrible blowback in the U.S. Before Bush, the nutcases in the Middle East focused their ire on Israel. Republican foreign policy has taken the bullseye off the back of the Israelis and put it squarely on our own.

Man, you guys should just listen to yourselves; rabid BDS, twisted logic and raving antisemitism all rolled up into one ugly, twisted dripping nut-roll.

Bush is saving all your silly poseur asses, whether you want hiim to or not. If these last remaining thugs (and I mean in the one's in Iraq, not those in the US congress) can push the US military out of the ME, you can't imagine the shit that will hit the fan.

Go, on enjoy your smugness, while it lasts.

An Oirish lad.

In this Dutch documentary on the Israel Lobby, both Colin Powell's Former Chief of Staff Col. Wilkerson, on the one hand, and Richard Perle, on the other hand, contend that there is no way that the US will leave the Middle-East (i.e. sever the US-Israel linkage, which amounts to the same thing). The former argues that is is "pragmatically" not feasible while the latter just says: forget it, it ain't gonna happen (with or without the oil, with or without the Lobby). Tony Judt and Daniel Levy suggest that Israel has better find a way out of the conundrum ... before the US is forced one way or another to sever the link. Not an easy piece to watch.

Anonymous, please diagram the sentence, and demonstrate where I misrepresented the meaning of it, or took it out of the context of the post. I suspect that you are rather like cmdicely, and have your own private meanings to words, which he calls inferences. It is truly bizarre behavior, like your silly insistance that Saudi Peninsula is not a common synonym ( really, do you think bodies such as the American Meteorological Society are ignorant of geography?) for Arabian Peninsula. I ask again; what on earth is wrong with you?

Matthew, you aren't going to overcome the efficiencies of burning oil byproducts to obtain energy in a short amount of time. Yes, by all means let's capture the externalities of obtaining energy out of the Persian Gulf; heck, I think Gore's proposal to slap a large carbon tax on the American consumer, offsetting it with reductions in FICA taxes, is an excellent one, although I'd like to see it done by the amendment process. We shouldn't fool ourselves, however, into believing that the critical nature of Persian Gulf oil to the global economy can likely be reduced by anything but in a drawn-out gradual process.

when has juan cole ever been wrong about the middle east, let alone ``unfailingly"?

figuring out a way to reduce Arab resentment of the West suddenly seems pretty important. The big question is: how?

Four words, Kevin: Get. The. Fuck. Out.

Dathi >"...imagine the shit that will hit the fan..."

I have and for quite some time. I think it is far past time for it to happen. I understand nuclear weapons and how they work. I also understand military operations having worn a uniform for a while & worked with the military as a civilian.

It is past time for the U.S.A. (not to mention the other involved parties) to stop delaying the inevitable & for God to step up & defend Israel.

LET ME BE CLEAR

If Israel is the choosen land of God then he will step up and defend the people of that land. If not then he won`t.

Time to get out of the way & LET IT HAPPEN.

What are you afraid of Dan & all you other defenders of the status quo ? Hmmmmm ?

"...Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter." - Daniel C. Dennett

Yes the Middle East does matter, to George Bush as long as the oil keeps flowing and dollars keep coming into G.W's bank account then yes the middle east does matter, and Suddam Insane was in no way a threat to the U.S. pretext to go to war to do nothing more than to steal their oil.

Why are Americans so beset with pipedreams about the Middle East? First we encountered the Wolfowitz illusion, instant free market democracy for Iraq and the whole region. No sooner than it went out of fashion, Friedman and now Luttwak replace it with another, American independence from Middle Eastern oil. Will this fantasy do as much damage to the region's stability, and everyone's security, as the first one? Possibly even more, for it has the potential to wreck the oil fields, hence, international manufacturing, hence, the global economy.

Too little sobriety, too many messiahs!

Jan Smith, your point is well taken, but I think you entirely overestimate the inherent stability of the House of Saud. There's good reason to think it is more inherently unstable, and not likely survive several more decades, no matter what policy the U.S. adopts. How it falls will have a huge impact on the rest of the world, in terms of economic dislocation. It is a terribly difficult situation.

"Did I say that? Did I imply that?"

Nah, simply asking BGRS if she received her talking points from davidduke.com and referring to many responders here as Nazis; Now, how could any of us infer that you implied any of that?

You never answered anything about Sharon's butchery, nor Pollard's treasonous actions, nor the loss of many American sailors on the USS Liberty. All military aid to Isreal should have ceased after the dispicable attack on the Liberty. If that had happened, your "success" story would never have occurred. Now, readjust you black, white and red arm band. Sieg, Baby!

Wow, a lot of paleocon Israel-haters around here.

No, those are paleoliberals.

Conservatives generally treat this place as entertainment.... not much point in posting here. The trolling is much better at Kos's site. ;-)

Jan Smith: Will this fantasy do as much damage to the region's stability, and everyone's security, as the first one? Possibly even more, for it has the potential to wreck the oil fields, hence, international manufacturing, hence, the global economy.

Much of the region's instability is caused by its oil revenue, not reduced by that revenue. Independence from Middle Eastern oil is no more a fantasy that is 8 aircraft carrier battle groups. Like them, the techonology exists, money is required, millions of man-hours of work are required, contributes to defense of America from foreign enemies and can be done.

Or consider for a moment the U.S. air transoportation system, with its federally funded and operated traffic control system, state and municipally funded airports, privately funded airlines, food service, fuel service and ticketing. Nobody imagined exactly that when the U.S. postal service first carried mail, but they knew that they could get something like that going eventually, if they worked on it, so they worked on it.

From 1980 to 2005 Brazil cut the cost of ethanol from about double the price of gasoline to below the price of gasoline, on an energy-equivalent basis. Over the same time span the U.S., with much greater internal reserves of energy, halted development of synfuels.

the money exists, the technology exists, the manpower exists, most changes are underway already and only ("only"!) need a strong push for the next 20 years. Consider the U.S. aircraft industry from 1940 to 1960.

Will Allen: Matthew, you aren't going to overcome the efficiencies of burning oil byproducts to obtain energy in a short amount of time.

What do you mean by "short"? Had we continued Jimmy Carter's synfuels developments we'd be out of the Middle East now. And exactly how is it "efficient" to spend $billions per year on military operations in the Persian Gulf while the Saudis use the money to fund madrassas that train the Taliban who are trying to reconquer Afghanistan? And lastly, if we don't push the alternative fuels route now, we'll still be stuck in the Middle East 20 years from now. That's not what ANYONE wants.

the theoretical "efficiency" of a free market in oil plainly and simply does not exist. And as a military matter, dependence on a fleet of slow-moving tankers reduces our military power (which is why all the services are investing in alternative fuel sources), as does confining our large, high-speed aircraft carriers to the small Persian Gulf.

With energy company profits as they are, with servicemen dying in Iraq, with federal borrowing at less than 2% of annual gdp, NOW is the time to push hard for alternative fuel supplies. There is no justification for more postponement. Like your imaginary "efficiency", all the arguments for postponement are worse than the arguments for a strong effort now.

Matthew, please prove that continuing the Carter-era synfuels program would have has us "out of the middle east by now". That is a remarkable claim, which ignores countervailing political and economic forces. The "efficiency" to which I refer is not a market efficiency, but rather the physical properties of a barrel of oil extracted from Saudi fields. Even reflecting the externalities involved in Persian Gulf oil extraction, it has been an inexpensive way to obtain energy, because extracting oil from those fields is physically easy to do.

Yes, the American consumer has been far too well shielded form those externalities, because you simply cannot wish away short term political considerations, no matter how high-minded you wish the polity would be. That ain't how the world works, and it ain't ever gonna be how the world works. I'm not arguing for postponement, I'm arguing that you are ignoring reality, politically, and in regards to the physics of energy obtained via oil versus other sources. I'd impose a whopping oil or carbon tax tomorrow if I had the power, but I don't fool myself into thinking that it would lessen the centrality of Persian Gulf oil in anything but several decades, and I don't fool myself into thinking that my advocacy of such a tax would make it likely that I could get elected to anything besides dogcatcher.

rosignol: Conservatives generally treat this place as entertainment....

Pretty much how they treat everything.

Nothing is more unserious than a conservative.

---------------------

Will Allen:

982 Google hits for "Saudi Peninsula."

1,140,000 Google hits for "Arabian Peninsula."

Talk about making up your own definitions . . .!

What a yuckfest!

I ask again; what on earth is wrong with you?

Note, I don't have to ask what on earth is wrong with you. I already know.

Now that we have the typical pedantic nonsense dealt with, here is an exact quote..

"Given the rather intense economic incentive that exists to extract oil, the thought that the US needs to actively intervene to guarantee that the people sitting on oil actually extract it seems to either suggest a rather ridiculously low opinion of the intelligence of the people in the region, or a similarly ridiculously high opinion of their inclination to defer gratification."

Which, you'll note, does not say anything like what you claim I said, debate over proper terminology for the piece of land on which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, &c., are located aside.

(Just as a clue: when you attribute things to me that are so grossly distorted as to have no close connection to anything I actually wrote, and I point that out and only list a "First" disagreement, that "First" is almost always deliberately a minor, tangential, and unimportant quibble, the real problem is that, well, what you say I said has no resemblance to anything I actually said. As is the case with what you attributed earlier, which is not what that quote says.)

...this statement is false,

Perhaps, though you haven't supported that argument, and, even if so, its irrelevant to your claim about what I said, which is not what that quote says.

or more accurately, irrelevant,

I would agree that it is irrelevant, at least when offered, as it is here, in support of your claim that I said that no one in the "Saudi Peninsula" would be willing to suffer a break in oil extraction (implicitly, under any circumstances).

What I said was that US intervention was unnecessary given that in the absence of US intervention in a manner antagonistic to local factions the oil would be extracted and willingly sold.

given that there are factions with the means, or working hard to obtain the means, with a reasonable chance of success, and the motivation to topple the House of Saud, who would be willing to defer the gratification of oil extraction.

Those factions existence and willingness to destroy oil infrastructure, as I noted, are in no small part products of the US intervention in the region. Which intervention continues to be behind much of the ongoing motivation for those groups.

It is the mind of a child that would think that that the removal of a political catalyst would necessarily, or even likely, mean the end of the movement which the catalyst gave impetus to or started.

Perhaps, but then again, I didn't say that either. Perhaps you should attack the claims I actually make, rather than the ones I don't. What I am saying is that the present threats you point to as the justification for a long-standing involvement are, in fact, products of that long-standing involvement, and therefore cannot be a good justification for it.

(I am also pointing out that that policy continues to be the biggest threat to extraction of oil in the region: nothing has damaged oil infrastructure in the region, recently, as much the two US led wars against Iraq and their immediate consequences. You simply can't justify US policy in the region with the desire to see oil extracted. You can, of course, justify with the desire to control who in the region benefits from the extraction, as I 've said repeatedly.)

I suspect that you are rather like cmdicely, and have your own private meanings to words, which he calls inferences.

Uh, no, what I call inferences are inferences, not "private meanings of words". Have you ever given even passing consideration to honesty?

Uh, anonymous, what form of google do you use on your planet? Mine returns 1,310,000 hits for the term "Saudi Peninsula", including such wacky sites which employ the term as the American Meteorological Society, Asia Times, PBS, Ohio State University, The Institute for Analysis of Global Security, among others.

I'm serious. There is something wrong with you. The delusions with each post.

cmdicely, we are right back to where it always ends with you, given you have previously stipulated that the actual meanings of words are not the method by which you interpret the content of a communication. I'll thus decline further dialogue, once again, until you get back on your meds. Perhaps you can get some from anonymous, given he obviously isn't using those he must have been prescribed, given his ravings.

By all means, though, first inform us of some more mythical peninsulas.

Will Allen: Uh, anonymous, what form of google do you use on your planet? Mine returns 1,310,000 hits for the term "Saudi Peninsula", including such wacky sites which employ the term as the American Meteorological Society, Asia Times, PBS, Ohio State University, The Institute for Analysis of Global Security, among others.

Uh, Will, I think you are lying, since I went to www.google.com and cut and pasted your term from above which yields exactly 982 hits.

Of course, if you enter "Saudi Peninsula" without the quotes you will get 1,310,000 hits because the term "Saudi" and the term "peninsula" both occur in that many pages, but they don't occur together.

You see, dimwit, Google treats "Saudi Peninsula" without the quotes as a search for "Saudi AND Peninsula" in the same page not a search for all pages containing the whole term "Saudi Peninsula".

And yes, I'm sure the AMS has pages that contain both the words "saudi" and "peninsula" somewhere in the same webpage, since terms "Saudi Arabia" and Arabian Peninsula" would likely occur together on a page many times and be responsive to the dishonest search criteria you entered to falsely "prove" your point.

So, once again we can see how deceitful you are about your "facts."

Will Allen: I'm serious. There is something wrong with you. The delusions with each post.

I'm serious.

There is something wrong or dishonest with your comprehension of how search engines like Google work.

REgardless, the fact that others make a similar geographic error 982 times doesn't excuse yours or negate the fact that it is an error.

But, hey, anyone who wants to take 982 chances they are correct versus 1,140,000 chances that they are not correct is a player in in my book!

'Uh, Will, I think you are lying, since I went to www.google.com and cut and pasted your term from above which yields exactly 982 hits.'

Gee, Will fibbing or screwing up again, quelle surprise.

"saudi peninsula" meteorological: 37 hits
"arabian peninsula" meteorological: 92,000 hits

Uh, anonymous, what form of google do you use on your planet? Mine returns 1,310,000 hits for the term "Saudi Peninsula",

If you use the search query (which has two terms):

Saudi Peninsula

in Google in the real world, you probably get that many hits (I get "about 1,190,000"), but Google can vary a bit in its estimates for different users.

If you use the search term:

"Saudi Peninsula"

then I'd be very surprised if you get much more than the 983 that I get with that term, but you being in a completely different universe would explain something. But no matter how many references to "Saudi Peninsula" you find, none of them will change the fact that I never said what you claimed I said about the people living there.

cmdicely, we are right back to where it always ends with you, given you have previously stipulated that the actual meanings of words are not the method by which you interpret the content of a communication.

Um, no, though you keep lying and saying I said that, which is amusing because the actual meanings of the words in the quote you sometimes say is the basis of that attribution don't support that characterization, making clear that you, at best, regularly practice what you get all self-righteous in claiming, falsely, that I have "stipulated" to doing, and at worst are fond of outright lying.

I'll thus decline further dialogue, once again, until you get back on your meds.

Once again, you are free to actually stop responding to me any time you wish, rather than making showing declarations of your intent to do so everytime you find you can't hold your own in a debate.

BTW, Will, you'd think if "Saudi Peninsula" was an appropriate synonym or alternative name for "Arabian Peninsula" that Answers.com and Wikipedia articles on the "Arabian Peninsula" would list it as such, since these sources are usually full of just that kind of tidbit, yet neither incorporates the phrase "Saudi Peninsula."

In fact, a search of Wikipedia with the term "Saudi Peninsula" produces 4 or less hits and no major heading. Usually, with Wikipedia, if an alternative term has common use, it appears as a separate entry with a link to the favored term. Yet there is no entry for "Saudi Peninsula" in Wikipedia.

Amazing, for a term you claim is perfectly appropriate.

Gee, and Britannica online's main page on the Arabian Peninsula also fails to mention "Saudi Peninsula" as an alternative name of reference.

See, I can be pedantic too!

No, anonymous, you raving maniac, AMS uses the exact term "Saudi Peninsula", as does PBS, as does Asia Times, as does Ohio State University, as does The Institute for Analysis for Global Security, among others. For instance...

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0493(2004)132%3C0623%3AAMRFTG%3E2.0.CO%3B2

...where The AMS says....

"The temperature fluctuations are high over the interior Saudi Peninsula and over Iran"

What do those dolts over at The American Meterological Society know about geography, compared to the towering intellect with the name "anonymous" at Political Animal, right?

Are you completely out of your mind?

Yes, yes, The AMS commonly refers to myhthological peninsulas. By the way, if you use their search function, you'll see the poor, deranged scientists at The AMS refer to the mythological "Saudi Peninsula" (exact phrase) five times. Perhaps cmdicely and anonymous should offer their insights.

What is the matter with you lunatics? Do you really think a place referred to by The American Meterological Society is mythical?

Yes, anonymous, to determine whether a geographical reference is appropriate, I go to wikipedia or answers.com, and ignore scientists who have spent their lives studying the world's geographical features.

Sheesh.

Are you aware that the Arabian Peninsula also includes the countries of Bahrain, Yeman, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and parts of Iraq and Jordan? Referring to the Saudi peninsula is referring to only one country in the Arabian peninsula. That's like calling the North America continent the American continent and not including Canada and Mexico.

That's like calling the North America continent the American continent and not including Canada and Mexico.

It's more like referring to the "United States of America" as simply "America", which is more properly the name of both Western hemispheric continental land masses grouped together, which, if you think about it, will give you a hint about where the "Arabian Peninsula" *is* indeed called the "Saudi Peninsula", and why certain ENglish speakers may have adopted this use.

Yes, I'm quite aware of this Mike; I've been there. In addition to what Disputo said, people all over the world often use the term "America" when referring solely to the United States, and not Canada.

Lunacy, I tell 'ya!

Will Allen: Matthew, please prove that continuing the Carter-era synfuels program would have has us "out of the middle east by now". That is a remarkable claim, which ignores countervailing political and economic forces.

Obviously it can not be proved that what didn't happen would have happened. I made this point when I said that we don't know what would have happened had the Federal Reserve responded differently to the crash of 1929. However, if the synfuels program of Carter been continued until now, we'd have 25-50 synfuels plants up and running, and the price of synfuels would be lower than it is now. How much lower? Well, consider the priced reductions in computing, PV cell manufacture and in ethanol from sugar. You know the former two. Brazil lowered the price of ethanol from sugar and it is now cheaper than gasoline, on an energy equivalent basis, and cheaper than gasoline was in 1980.

If you include the cost of defending the Middle East oil fields, then gasoline from synfuels is cheaper than gasoline from petroleum now. The problem is that people don't think of the total cost of petroleum, they defend their habits as "principles", and they ignore the fungibility of money. the only thing preventing us from shifting defense money into synfuels production now, at no net increase in federal spending, is a psychological commitment to a mistake we made 25 years ago.

If we had built the synfuels plants that I conjectured, we would today be importing no oil from the Middle East. We'd have not sacrificed 3100+ soldiers, $billions in money, and $billions in worn out equipment. Who here would not have willingly given up extra $$$ in tax, year after year, to have spared those soldiers, if their lives had been recognized as part of the cost? Who here would not willingly sacrifice $$$ yearly in tax in order to avoid sending more after them?

As it works now, the money goes to the Saudis instead of to our federal government, which works out to a net loss for us.

I am in mind of a middle-aged out-of-shape man who does not want to give up tv time to exercise or transfer his dessert budget to an athletic club memebership. I won't make fun of him, but I also do not think that defending bad habits is a matter of principle. His choice is costing him his health whether I criticize him or not.

Will Allen: Yes, anonymous, to determine whether a geographical reference is appropriate, I go to wikipedia or answers.com, and ignore scientists who have spent their lives studying the world's geographical features.

Funny that real geographers disagree with the weathermen you cite as geographic experts in order to cover for your mendacity and self-absorbed arrogance that can't admit error or deceit . . .

And still no apology for or admission of lying about how many times the term "Saudi Peninsula" googles.

Oh, well, not any less than what I expected.

Let's see:

Geographic.org, actual geographers, not weathermen: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

National Geographic, actual professional geographers, not weathermen: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

Kids.gov, actual federal website for information on, among other things, geography: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

Geographynetwork.com, more actual geographers, not weathermen: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

The Human Geography Gateway in Intute, again actual geographers, not weathermen: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

Department of Geography, Penn State University: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

The Geography Site, yet more geographers rather than weathermen (or arrogant dolts named Will Allen): 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

The American Geographical Society: 0 hits for "Saudi Peninsula"

----------

But stick with your weathermen and your refusal to admit your google gaff, Will.

I like watching you make a complete fool of yourself over and over and over again.

Disputo: It's more like referring to the "United States of America" as simply "America."

Let me know if you get only 982 google hits for "America" as a reference to the United States and I will grant it is similar to "Saudi Peninsula" for "Arabian Peninsula."

LOL.

If "certain English speakers" had adopted this use in any significant way, there would be far more than the 982 google hits.

There would in fact be about the false 1,310,000 hits that Will tried to pawn off as fact.

Will goes to weathermen, rather than actual geographers, and calls the former experts and utterly ignores the real experts on geography and still won't admit his false statement about google hits.

Too, too funny.

Gotta love it.

Hey, Will, if you keep posting it enough, maybe you can get that 982 hits up to, say, 1000, and then you can declare yourself a real geographic expert on par with weathermen!

Maybe you can even get some people to pick it up and then it really will be an alternate term.

Again, LOL.

Nothing like cruel facts to bring down arrogant gits like Bush and Will Allen.

Yes, anonymous I forgot to pun in parentheses, and Arabian Peninsula is more common, which says
exactly nothing about the fact that many sources do use the term Saudi Peninsula. Now, once again, is it your contentioon that the American Meteoroligical Society refers to mythical peninsulas? Are you out completely crazy?

Matthew, please prove that the cost of synfuels is cheaper that gasoline from petroleum, once the cost of defending Persian Gulf oil fields is factored.

Will Allen: Now, once again, is it your contentioon that the American Meteoroligical Society refers to mythical peninsulas?

It is my contention that the Meteorological Society wrongly refers to the Arabian Peninsula as the "Saudi Peninsula."

It is my contention that a society whose mission is "the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences" has no expertise in geography itself, while geographers would tend to have expertise in meteorology, the latter being a teenie tiny subset of the sciences that might, but not necessarily do, fall within geographical studies, and one that has little to do with naming of places and peoples, such as cartography and toponymy would.

Not even the Society itself claims any geographical expertise, only you do.

Your reference to meteorologists as a valid source of expertise on geography is like referring to a chemist as an expert on medical science.

But please when you go to get your brain surgery to reduce the size of your overdeveloped ego, have a biochemist do it, rather than a brain surgeon.

After all, since to you one scientist is just as good as another on any scientific subject, regardless of their actual expertise, a chemist should be able to perform brain surgery every bit as well as an actual brain surgeon.

BTW, Will, my search on the actual AMS website reveals zero hits for "Saudi Peninsula" or even "Saudi" AND "Peninsula."

In fact it reveals zero hits for "Arabian Peninsula", which is fairly strange for a group that supposedly has spent their lives studying geographic features and their names.

So, just as with your google dishonesty, I suspect you are once again misrepresenting your search and your search results.

Par for your course.

Will Allen: Matthew, please prove that the cost of synfuels is cheaper that gasoline from petroleum, once the cost of defending Persian Gulf oil fields is factored.

To start with, shall we include the 3100 American dead in the current war, the cost of maintaining the Naval Base in Bahrain, and the cost of gulf War 1, $80B of the upcoming appropriation, and the $70B that Kerry was for before he was against it? Back soon.

a chemist should be able to perform brain surgery every bit as well as an actual brain surgeon.

Pick me! Pick me! I'm a biochemist! And only 9hrs. shy of a masters in neuro.

http://www.nma.org/pdf/liquid_coal_fuels_100505.pdf

this one puts the cost of a barrel of crude equivalent from coal at $35 per barrel. that compares nicely to the current world price of about $60 per barrel. Now add in a few hundred billions of dollars of defense expenditures for the Middle East, and the costs of the 3100 deaths and 40,000 or so American injuries, and voila! the cost of oil on the world market is above the cost of oil from synfuels.

the problem is that if we invest a lot in synfuels in a hurry, the price of oil will drop below $35 per barrel faster than the price of synfuels drops. At that point it will look as though investing in the synfuels was a mistake. On the other hand, if we don't build enough energy supply for the U.S., the cost of petroleum will never come down. Transferring money from defense to synfuels is a win-win proposition for the U.S. think what the $130B supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war would supply if invested in synfuels instead of munitions.

One of these days we'll come back to the Hubbert's Peak problem, and then I can present a range of estimates for the costs of synfuels. there is a plant under construction in western Washington on the Columbia river near Longview. When next we discuss, I can look into details of that.

I usually deny that the Iraq war was a mistake, or that it is already lost. On the other hand, it's the second such war, and I see no reason for a third, a fourth, and so on, if oil is any part of the reason.

Here is another one worth following in the future:

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2006/08/28/story11.html?f=et158&b=1156737600%5E1336115&hbx=e_vert

Yes, yes, anonymous, you know more about the geography of the planet than a group of scientists whose job it is to study weather formations, formations which are greatly influenced by geography. Good grief, you are a lunatic.

You couldn't find the references because you didn't look in the right place. You need to click on publications, and then search the actual AMS journals. You are nuts, aren't you?

Hoo, boy. Matthew, if the equivalent from coal can be produced at $35 dollars a barrel, then I suggest you are wasting your time with the likes of us; get on the horn with some venture capitalists and make yourself a fortune!

Hey, Matthew, I was in a hurry, and snapped off a response too quickly. I think some issues are being confused. You are conflating the market price of a barrel of oil with how much it costs to extract a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia. Even factoring military expenditures, it doesn't cost anywhere near $35 doallars, to say nothing of $60, to extract a barrel of oil from a Saudi Arabian oil field.

Will Allen: You need to click on publications, and then search the actual AMS journals.

Still refusing to admit when you've lied about how and where you've searched.

You said you searched AMS, not the AMS journal site.

Not surprising for someone as mendacious and arrogant as you.

All papers in such publications contain disclaimers that the views in the articles are those of the authors, not the publisher, the AMS.

Thus, you are not citing the official position of the AMS, but an ad hoc handful of authors, out of thousands, who happened to publish in the AMS journal or journals.

And anyone who has ever edited or read such journals knows that articles often contain typos and mistakes that go uncorrected before publication.

So you are citing errors in scientific journals of scientists whose specialty and linkage to geography is wholly tangential as your proof that you didn't make an error, while still refusing to acknowledge your lie about 982 vs. 1,140,000 and now your lie about the AMS website.

You are both nuts and a liar, driven by arrogance and a need to impose your delusional and self-serving view of the world on others by lying about the facts, by the misuse of logic, and by misrepresenting what others have written.

You paint a pathetic picture.

Please keep posting inane defenses that are as easily knocked down as bowling pins with the gutters blocked.

. . . formations which are greatly influenced by geography.

Weather is not influenced by geography in the slightest.

Geography is the study of places and things and their place in the world; it is not a characteristic of the earth.

You are too stupid to realize that it is topography, among other physical characteristics of the earth, its atmosphere, and its surrounding space, that influences the weather, not the study of places and things that influences the weather.

You are much too clever by a quarter.

------------------

BGRS: I'd pick you to do my brain surgery before Will any day! In fact, I'd pick you to do whatever Will purports to do as a profession over Will any day. A man who doesn't understand the meaning of geography or who constitutes an expert in such, and then repeatedly lies to cover up for that lack of understanding, is not a man to trust with much of anything.

Uh, anonymous, I'll just note that a person who claims that geography doesn't affect weather formations is truly nuts, to use a technical term. Since you wish to use Wikipedia as a reference, I'll just go with their definition.....

"Geography is the study of the earth and its features, inhabitants, and phenomena."

...and then further says....

"Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main sub fields: human geography and physical geography. The former focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed and managed by humans as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy. The latter examines the natural environment and how the climate, vegetation & life, soil, water and landforms and produced and interact."

Given the need to explain the term "geography" to you, I think I'll not bother to explain why I would be hesitant (by the way you do know that an uncommon place name is not necessarily "wrong" don't you?) to declare your knowledge of geography superior to someone who is published by The AMS.

Finally, your entire behavior in this thread is bizarre beyond description. It started with you making an assertion that a politcal faction was incorrect about how a political development would unfold (btw, feel free to diagram the paragraph or post to show how I misrepresented it's content, as you contend), and when I merely provided an example of said faction not being incorrect about said political development, and made an innocuous and non-partisan comment that no political faction has very good track record of predicting the future, you proceeded to go stark raving mad. I'll ask again: What in the world is wrong with you?

anonymous--
Hey, I'm a geographer myself...what the hell is this argument about?

If you want to know the official name of some geographic feature, there is an international standard adhered to by the US government. No, you cannot just call a geographical feature anything you want. You can in weblog comments, but not in the real world or on real maps. Believe me, I should know. I face the wrath of county and city officials if I ever get any of their names even slightly wrong.

If you want to know the true name of something, look it up at the Board of Geographic Names website. This is the legal standard. Names are serious things, as much as it might seem like a joke to us. BGN meetings are notoriously secretive and contentious.

Yes, there are informal names and the same feature can have more than one name. But I have never heard the Arabian peninsula referred to as the Saudi peninsula. That would make absolutely no sense even if Saudi Arabia was the only country on the peninsula. "Saudi" is the name of the ruling house of Saudi Arabia. It's like "Tudor England" or "Communist China". "Arabia" is obviously the word they themselves are using to describe the geographic feature in which their nation is located. Calling it "Saudi" Arabia itself implying that there is in fact another part of "Arabia" that is NOT Saudi. (In this respect, it is much unlike our own countries name, where the "United States of America" kind of makes it seem like there might be no part of America that is outside the USA. Our nation has a pretty bad and misleading name from a purely geographic perspective)

So in this case, "Saudi Peninsula" is just a wrong appellation. It doesn't really matter in the context it was brought up in (everyone sort of knows what they're talking about anyway) but it is a mistake that should be corrected.

Why, kokblok? To satisfy your professional association? If it doesn't matter in the context, and everybody knows what one is talking about, how can the use of language be "wrong"? I could see it being the case if one were writing for your association's publication, but how can something "make no sense", if everybody can make sense of it?

Will Allen: I'll just note that a person who claims that geography doesn't affect weather formations is truly nuts, to use a technical term.

I'll just note that a person who claims that the study of something affects that thing is truly nuts, to use a technical term.

Geography is the study of the earth and its features . . .

Geography is the study of the earth and its inhabitants, it is not something that affects the earth and its inhabitants.

Your deliberate refusal to acknowledge this is simply more of your mendacity at play.

kokblok: Hey, I'm a geographer myself...what the hell is this argument about?

Will Allen referred to the Arabian Peninsula as the Saudi Peninsula and when corrected proceeded to lie and come up with irrational reasons why calling the Arabian Peninsula the Saudi Peninsula not only is not incorrect, but a perfectly appropriate and commonly used alternative name.

Will continues to lie, most recently about the meaning of geography, even after documenting that meaning, including misrepresenting how and where he performed internet searches to "prove" his point.

The only issue now is how many times I can get Will to lie and twist the meanings of words in order to come up with inane justifications for why he wasn't wrong and why he didn't lie.

The score is still 982 to 1,140,000 and he's still losing, even though he falsely claims the score is 1,140,000 to 1,310,000.

---------------

Will Allen: If it doesn't matter in the context, and everybody knows what one is talking about, how can the use of language be "wrong"?

Funny from someone who consistently criticizes other posters for their inaccurate or incomplete or insufficiently clear comments.

Hey, Matthew, I was in a hurry, and snapped off a response too quickly. I think some issues are being confused. You are conflating the market price of a barrel of oil with how much it costs to extract a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia. Even factoring military expenditures, it doesn't cost anywhere near $35 doallars, to say nothing of $60, to extract a barrel of oil from a Saudi Arabian oil field.

I was writing about the price of oil delivered to the U.S., because that is the price that Americans pay. If we did indeed pay only the cost of drilling it in Saudi Arabia, that would be nice -- but the oil doesn't do us any good there. My whole point is that the cost of oil is considerably greater than the free market ideal cost. Eventually I'll look up how many barrels of oil we have imported from the Middle East since 1991, and I'll look up the cost of our military ventures there -- maintaining bases, supplemental appropriations for the Iraq war, and so forth -- and add them to the cost of the oil.

As to your comment about venture capital, it is flowing into synfuels faster than the new construction can be approved. the largest plant under construction is in -- where else? -- China. More properly, it's in inner Mongolia, financed by a consortium of government and private finance. The largest plant in the U.S. is in N. Dakota. They are expanding their output. Interestingly, they sell the CO2 to Canadian oil firms who use it to pump into the oil fields and enhance recovery. They pipe it north. There's sort of a shortage of CO2. More properly, other sources are more expensive than the CO2 from synfuels, and hard to acquire in large quantities. CO2 from synfuels fills a market need very nicely.

Economically, it would do the U.S. a world of good to pull our military out of the Middle East and let the wars happen as they will. Purely economically, it's a loss for us to spend money on the military to defend oil that nominally only costs about $5/barrel.

We'll come back to this one day when our moderator starts moaning about the end of the world of oil again.

Militarily, we are better off in time of war if our fuel is not in a thin line of slow tankers trying to cross the Pacific Ocean.