Winners and Losers

August 21, 2006
     It is interesting to see how suggestible world opinion can be. Hassan Nasrallah says that Hezbollah "won" the one-month war it started with Israel and the world affects to believe it. Even the Lebanese pretend to believe it, though their economy was wrecked in the process.

     What interests me a little more is the absence of any sense of cause and effect among the Lebanese leaders. They allow Hezbollah to operate as a surrogate military within their state, and then they complain when Hezbollah's military transgressions are answered by an Israeli military response against the host state. And now the Lebanese have to pretend to celebrate Hezbollah's victory -- while tourists quietly decide to go anywhere in the Mediterranean except Beirut.

     Another body of opinion, exemplified by George Friedman at Stratfors, says that by failing to eliminate Hezbollah's hardened positions in south Lebanon, Israel has lost its aura of military invincibility -- the invisible shield that for thirty-odd years made the leaders of Muslim states think twice before starting a rumble. This might be true for the moment. But it doesn't include the additional reality that sometimes failure is a salutary prompt to rethink one's tactics and strategy. The likelihood now is that Israel will find ways around Hezbollah's (and Iran's) tactic of conducting rocket war from fortified bunkers and Israel will not advertise it when they do.

     Israel's current Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert may be viewed as a loser by Israel's Knesset or parliament, and they may replace him with Bibi Netanyahu, who was PM in the 1990s and went through his own years of loserdom, and now might return to power with a more refined tragic sense of politics and circumstance, as Churchill did in England in 1939.

     World opinion seems to regard Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the current "winner" in the region. He says he aims to kick Israel's ass and sends his goons to show the world how it's done. They're like little kids who go to a neighbor's house, set a paper bag full of dog shit on fire on the door step, ring the doorbell, and hide in the bushes to watch the response. Eventually the police show up.

     America's aura of loserdom in the Iraq adventure glows a more nauseating shade of greenish brown every day. But it would be a mistake to think that Iraq was Vietnam all over again. Iraq stopped being a war for us three years ago and became a hopeless police action in a terrible neighborhood. Would Iraq (and the world) be better off with Saddam Hussein still in charge? My guess is he would be vying with Mr. Ahmadinejad to lead the jihad for a return of the Islamic caliphate. That event might have stimulated Europe to take the clash of civilizations a little more seriously a little sooner -- but, alas, we will never know.

      As things stand now, Iraq appears poised to crack up along ethnic and regional lines, no matter how many Hummers patrol the streets, which would leave most of the remaining oil wealth of the Shiite-dominant south within Iran's sphere of influence.

     Sooner or later America is going to lose access to the roughly 20 percent of the total oil imports it gets that come from the Middle East. The foothold in Iraq was an attempt to postpone that day. It looks like it will not work out. The US army is exhausting itself and bankrupting the civilian treasury. Sixty percent of the US public now disapproves of our continued presence there. Internal pressures among the Middle East oil producers themselves -- including those on the sidelines of the war -- will create additional stresses. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, the UAE, all have peaked now in terms of oil production. Meanwhile, their populations still grow, their internal oil consumption increases, leaving less for export, and the quality of the crude goes from light-and-sweet to heavy-and-sour, with further difficulties for refining and marketing.

     If America loses 20 percent of its oil imports -- on top of steep depletion rates elsewhere (Mexico, the North Sea), plus political trouble in places like Nigeria and Venezuela -- then we can kiss goodbye a whole roster of things like WalMart, easy motoring on the interstate highway system, Walt Disney World, a continued profitable build-out of suburbia, and a diet of Cheez Doodles and Pepsi. I am on record, of course, as not being in favor of these things, but it would be very messy indeed if they all ground to a halt in a few mere months.

      We've done a lousy job of preparing ourselves to live differently. In fact, the whole thrust of American politics along the whole spectrum has been to keep the current racket going. This is why the only broad discussion now occurring over our energy problems is focused to the point of neurotic obsession with keeping the cars running by other means at all costs. This is true on left as well as the right. The left is lost in raptures of driving around in cars fueled by used french-fry oil. The right is lost in raptures of executive pay packages for retiring oil company executives. We are putting no thought, meanwhile, into how we will grow our food in an energy-scarce future, how we will conduct manufacturing and trade, or how we will heat all the McHouses.

     There are two themes here, related by strange circumstance, and both a clear and present danger to America's well-being. One is the implacable enmity of an Islamic world bent on vanquishing its old adversary "the Crusader West." And the other is the West's inability to face the practical problems of reorganizing our societies to meet the reality of an energy-scarcer future. The scary thing is, we have to take both of these challenges seriously.
     In the meantime, Israel is the West's stalking horse and Jihad's whipping boy. We should recognize the obvious symbolism.

Comments

[Alfred]

Thank you Mr. Kunstler for drifting back towards a discussion of oil and the end of suburbia. Your knowledge in that area is so much more useful than that of the Middle East.
Thank you for pointing out that the US occupation of Iraq was only based on the assumed deposits of oil in that unfortunate country.
Below, I have placed parts of an article in today's Financial Times - hardly a leftwing paper - on the perspective on this side of the Atlantic of the disaster that is the US foreign policy. I really have nothing further to add.

America has emerged as a loser in the Middle East

As Israelis and Arabs continue their debate over who won and lost in Lebanon, one outcome already seems clear: America lost. Washingtons decision to back Israels military campaign unconditionally and refusal actively to seek an early ceasefire may have had some marginal benefits for the US, such as the destruction of some of Hizbollahs military capability. But in the broader scheme of things, Washingtons support of this war and tolerance for the way it was fought have been a disaster.
Americas stance on the Lebanon war has had a wide range of negative consequences for America. It has driven Sunni and and Shia Arabs together in an anti-US front, at a time when potential US allies among Sunni Muslims were themselves worrying about the rise of Hizbollah and Iran. It has provoked and empowered the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, just as Washington is deploying more troops to Baghdad to try to quell the violence there. It has distracted attention from the Iranian nuclear issue, just as the United Nations Security Council was coming together to threaten sanctions on Tehran. It has destroyed whatever remaining hope there was for the US to be perceived as an honest broker between Israelis and Arabs in the search for peace in the Middle East. It has undermined US allies and democratic reformers in Arab states. It has also created a new crisis of confidence with Americas European allies just when transatlantic relations were starting to improve.
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Perhaps most important, it has almost certainly helped create more terrorist enemies, as images of Lebanese women and children crushed under Israeli bombs were broadcast on satellite televisions throughout the world. On an overall balance sheet, these developments vastly outweigh whatever benefits came from giving Israel a few more weeks to destroy Hizbollahs mostly replaceable missiles.
Proponents of the Bush administrations approach claim that far from undermining US interests with its Lebanon campaign, Israel was actually doing a service for America. In this view, the US is essentially at war with an Islamic-fascist front, to borrow president George W.Bushs language, and Israels attack on Hizbollah was just an early battle in what some US neo-conservatives and politicians such as Newt Gingrich are already calling world war three.
They argue that the only way to deal with such a front is to destroy it, and therefore Israel was acting in Americas interest in launching the campaign. But this is a huge over-simplification of the strategic situation in the Middle East today, one that risks turning the assumption of a single enemy into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It conflates a complex array of connected but separable challenges a Shia theocracy in Iran, a secular dictatorship in Syria, the nationalist/Islamist Hamas in Palestine, various Shia militia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq, and Lebanons Hizbollah into a monolithic threat that cannot be deterred or dealt with except through overwhelming force. Just like the Bush administrations approach to Iraq, it demonstrates utter disregard for the tendency of foreign military intervention to generate nationalist resentment and violent resistance.
It remains unclear whether US officials were involved in the planning of Israels war on Hizbollah (as asserted by Seymour Hersh in last weeks New Yorker magazine) or whether Israels actions surprised Washington and were unconditionally supported out of political reflex. Either way, it seems astonishing that US policymakers did not think through the ways in which Israels military campaign might undermine competing American goals in the region. US officials now portray the decision by Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, to go to New York to negotiate a ceasefire last week as a bold diplomatic move that demonstrated US leadership and brought peace, but the real question is why it took her nearly 30 days to act. The damage done to western interests in the greater Middle East to say nothing of the social and physical infrastructure in Lebanon and Israel far exceeds whatever gains the Israeli military campaign achieved in the intervening period.
It is too late now to undo all this damage. To make the best of a bad situation, the Bush administration should do what it can to bolster the Lebanese government, support the deployment of a capable UN force, provide reconstruction assistance and encourage a political process in the region.
In the future, however, the US must think more carefully about the broader impact of its Middle East diplomacy, even if at times this means taking a different position from its closest regional ally. This would be the best way to help Israel, which would benefit from having a superpower friend that maintains some credibility and diplomatic influence in the Middle East.
>

[Save Israel From Neo-cons]

Israel is doing the neo-con dirty work, for the moment. Too bad about Kunstler, a gifted author who has decided to do it for free.

Jim, if you really cared about the survival of Israel, your opinion of current affairs would not be nearly as simplistic and one-sided.

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

"Would Iraq (and the world) be better off with Saddam Hussein still in charge? My guess is he would be vying with Mr. Ahmadinejad to lead the jihad for a return of the Islamic caliphate."

Iran-Iraq War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_iraq_war

[Nicholas Paredes]

Perhaps the real news in the peak oil scenario was China's increase in imports. This is only bound to increase with or without the United States purchasing widgets in mass.

My understanding of the oil scenario is really that developing market usage combined with reserve depletion will drive prices upward. Rather than worry about how much is left in the ground, I look at daily supply and demand. Can more be pumped? Is more needed?

So many opinions on the Middle-East, and so little progress. With less oil, is anyboody expecting the situation to improve? Without any effort build an educated middle class, and destroying what little there was, Israel will require a much larger wall in the future. Personally, I'm not for stirring up the muck any further.

[Mike]

Interesting slide back into peak oil concerns and other "our precious way of life" concerns from JHK this morning. Sure seems on the balance that whatever comes of George & Dick's Excellent Iraqi Adventure, the procurement of the raw materials for our non-negotiable lifestyle won't be part of it.

* * *

As the brutal survival of the fittest struggle/battle for oil & resources goes on daily in the middle east, I think often about mankind's role in evolution.

In other words, we've reached such clear dominance of the ecosystem, where's the line between that dominance, exploitation, and outright screwing up of evolutionary processes? Should there be a "line"? Should we ever go over it?

I read a story over the weekend about "invading" oysters in SF Bay, and their influence on the prior balance in that biosystem. Predictably, some scientists & other experts are trying to figure out how to "fix the problem." I wrote a short bit on it, and wonder what others think:

http://mikesneighborhood.blogspot.com/2006/08/just-think-how-big-pearls-would-be-not.html

[nostalgia]

Having spent some time driving from DC to Ruichmond along 95 for the first time since 2000, I can only say that in my opinion, Kunstler is likely underestimating the coming crash.

Living in a drip by drip situation, it is not easy to imagine the drips becoming a wall of water.

And as a bonus, I went through Heathrow getting back here - truly a fascinating insight into the coming world - chaos surrounded by people following the rules, whatever they were and wherever they came from, without any real regard of what their actions meant.

[jorge]

Good morning:

JHK's brilliant image of a triumphant Israeli army is a misguided picture of the mess arising from the Second Lebanese War. Yesterday I had a chance to take a deep dive in the English-language media in Israel to find out what the talking heads are talking about over there. The picture they draw is anything but the rosy images of JHK's imagination.

Here are some of the things that I gleaned from reading Israeli newspapers:

--Israel's civil defense was unable to handle the disruption caused in the north by Hizbollah's rocketing. Thousands of Israelis had to depend on non-governmental organizations, friends or family to secure shelter, food and water while holed up in ghastly shelters completely bereft of essentials.

--The IDF was held back for the three first weeks of the war while the Halutz plan unfolded. When it became apparent that, first, the rockets would continue falling, and, two, that a ceasefire could not be further delayed by the US due to international pressure, Olmert and the War Cabinet put a very tall order on the IDF's board, namely, to invade Lebanon up to the Litani River and secure fortified positions in expectation of ceasefire arrangements to secure the gains on the ground (a la post-1951 Korean War period). The IDF had been making hit-and-run operations inside Lebanon and had failed to uproot Hizbollah fighters from highly fortified positions in and around villages and hamlets. When given the order to invade and hold, the IDF stepped into a hornet's nest exemplified by fierce set-position firefights in which several of the vaunted Merkava tanks were blown to pieces by wire-guided anti-tank missile of Soviet 1980's vintage. The IDF had its skin saved by the ceasefire.

--Israeli troops ran out of fuel, food, ammunition and water during that part of the campaign. Reservists coming back from the front could not believe the incompetence and lack of logistical support that the General Staff reflected. For the first time in its history the IDF lost the strategic initiative on the ground simply because it could not keep its soliders feed and armed.

--Both left and right wing media agree that corruption, mediocrity and inefficiency both in the IDF and the government are to blame. There is an ominous coda to these findings, again on all sides of the spectrum: the occupation of the West Bank has deteriorated the IDF to the point of making it a questionable fighting machine. As indicated ad nauseam, the IDF has come to confuse its occupation duties with military operations, and the obligations of the occupation has bred an entire generation of IDF officers who are little more than policemen used to rough up civilians and combat two-bit amateurs armed with rusty AK-47s. When this warped force met the trained soldiers of Hizbollah the surprise was great.

--The IDF lost 155 soldiers during this month-long action. This number does not represent a shocking amount per se, but put it in perspective: taken on a per capita basis, the US armed forces would have lost close to 6,500 thousand servicepersons. The military occupation in Iraq has produced 2,600 dead in three years; Israel produced per capita KIA almost three times as much in little over a month. The Israeli public is howling in indignation against these steep losses, most of which were suffered during the mad dash towards the Litani through Hizbollah-infested ground.

--There will be a board of inquiry which will be asking how and why the decision to go to war was made. Among the things asked will be if Israel was prompted or encouraged by the US to do its dirty work against Iran-Syria or if the action was only circumstantially congruent with US-inpsired policy for the region. Regardless of the results (and most of the Israeli media tend to believe that the US and Israel did not coordinate the unleashing of the war, but rapidly reached an agreement that armed action would benefit them both and should be maintained long enought to neutralize Hizbollah), the Olmert government will probably fall as a result of the clusterfuckly way in which the military action developed.

--Every single Israeli paper agrees that this is only a lull. There is widespread skepticism regarding the political will and ability of the UN to secure a force with a clear mandate and means to enforce the ceasefire terms. Most Israelis polled believe that Israel will be back in Lebanon before a year goes by.

So JHK certainly is inhabiting a world different to that inhabited by most Israelis. That country is going through the shock of discovering that, for the first time in their history, their country has shown itself to be as incompetent, lazy, self-conceited, and corrupt as any other small democracy.

The only difference is that other small democracies can afford those foibles. Israel is still marked for death in the region. But that's another story for another day.

In the meantime JHK throws his faithful readers a small bone by banging the drum regarding the imminent collapse of our oil-fueled energy consumption orgy. To this I will only reply that predicting is hard, especially the future. It is very hard for humans to think in a non-linear fashion simply because we tend to create patterns based on existing reality and projecting those into the future. That's what gave us the 'Jetsons' and 'Space:1999': the belief that technology would develop in linear fashion on the same way it had during the 1950 and 1960 decades. Well, it didn't for many reasons, including the debasement of US industrial base to the limitations of physical matter.

The same will hold true about the dislocations brought by peak oil: when they happen, I am pretty sure they will come out of left field, unannounced and unpredicted.

Cheers,

[Toby Murdock]

Thank you Mr. Kunstler for another illuminating and, of course, alarming piece about our state of affairs.

While deeply concerned about our future, I'd like to focus on what we can do to fix things. One step is to work on all of us getting more of our products locally, particularly food. With that in mind, I'd urge readers to consider taking the Eat Local Challenge set forth here:

http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/

If you are really into everything that gets written here, walk to walk too and take the challenge (or maybe you're already doing it . . . all the better!).

[RJ]

"..two themes here, related by strange circumstance, and both a clear and present danger to America's well-being"..

Excellent analysis this week Jim.. Let me suggest the obvious third nagging issue which has us securely by our collective balls: global warming.. It all adds up to an obvious overwhelming check-mate on the great 150-year-old fossil fuel experiment anyway ya choose to slice it up. Meanwhile, American culture looks to be pretty well all set up and burrowed in with those cheeze doodles and pepsi, for a couple weeks of all JonBenet all the time 24/7..

[Montysano]

"Would Iraq (and the world) be better off with Saddam Hussein still in charge? "

Let's rephrase the question: would the world be better off with a stable, albeit totalitarian, regime in Iraq, or with compete chaos? I get no joy at all from suggesting that it's the former.

Here's a question: Let's say George W. Bush was visited by an angel, had an epiphany, and stood up tomorrow and said "We've got a terrible energy problem; we've got to start conserving immediately!" So we begin with the obvious waste:

- widespread carpooling begins;
- we quite lighting the night sky (parking lots, buildings, etc.);
- thermostats are turned up (or down) nationwide.

What percentage decrease could we achieve right away? Does anyone have a feel for this? I have to feel that it's a significant number.

And yeah....I know.....an angel, an epiphany, Dubya getting a clue: a nice fantasy, but never gonna happen.

[Michael Ketterer]

Great column as always by JHK. I'm glad that you mentioned Mexico, because here in the southwestern US this situation is close at hand. Although a bit off the subject of your column, I'll take this opening to make some remarks. We (the US) stand to lose big-time as Mexico's oil depletes and their exports to the US stop.

Mexico's oil peak is now the driver for US immigration policy. Mexico has long been a net exporter of crude oil, and has been one of the US’s most important suppliers in the years following the USA’s own ~ 1970 peak in domestic production. Objective data point to Mexico’s oil production peaking soon (if not already), following which a steep decline is unavoidable. The supergiant field Cantarell, second in size only to the Saudi's Ghawar, is falling off a cliff. Accordingly, Mexico’s importance as a crude supplier to the US will plummet in the next 5-10 years, which will sharply curtail supplies from one of our three biggest providers (a group including Canada and Saudi Arabia).

Not only will Mexico's economy suffer, Mexico’s government stands to be in chaos, as it is financed in large part by revenues from Pemex. Mexico cannot even think of looking for deepwater oil as the government has skimmed off all the profits and left none for reinvestment. As their economy hemmorages, the flood of economic refugees will make today’s situation appear to be a trickle.

Anticipating this, Bush/Cheney tell us we need a big fence to keep the refugees out, while letting us naively believe we must do so for other reasons. Yet I have not ever met a Mexican terrorist nor one who does not admire our freedoms.

As Mexico plummets, it just gives Hugo Chavez more leverage to dictate terms and conditions to us. Bush and Cheney will next find a reason to invade Venezuela. Already our military presence in Colombia has more to do with protecting oil flows than curtailing the flow of drugs.

If Mexico were 20-30 years away from the oil peak and able to further raise production (and specifically exports to the US in preference to China), I seriously doubt we would be seeing the border issue on Bush’s radar screen. That is not to say that I advocate a lifeboat ethics relationship with Mexico. We will soon be just as miserable in El Norte, just as JHK has described the southwest in "The Long Emergency".

[Dave]

The end of summer and the living seems easy from dreamland's various perches but for how long ?
NG this winter, if its a hard one and we are due for one or perhaps a flood in the Central Valley of Ca. due to melting snowpack and the Pineapple express knocking out about twenty percent of our fruit and vegetables for a period of time. Take your pick of these and the various others. Conclusion is very obivous- complexity yields chaos in the long run and anxiety in the near term. Don't tell the Zombies though. I've tried for years and they just don't want to know.

[Pat Doyle]

JHK's view of the middle east is quite antebellum. The disatrous invasion and occupation of Iraq has strengthened Iran, who is now emerging as a true-blue Islamic superpower who is assiduously contructing a Shiite crescent from Pakistan to Palestine. Our national treasure is virtually trapped in Iraq now. Should the US choose to start lobbing bombs on Iran, our troops would be easily cut-off from their supply lines in the south by an Iranian counter-strike and left to fight a Shiite army with nearly inexhaustable supply across the neighbor's fence. Never underestimate the Bush cabal's acumen for making things worse.

[jorge]

Michael K and Dave:

Don't worry, be happy:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/18/news/economy/oil_fear/index.htm?cnn=yes

There's lots of oil out there, CNN informs us, and within a few years oil will go down to $50 a barrel which, inflation considered, will put us back on the happy happy days of the 90's.

Party on, Wayne and Garth!

Cheers,

[kuros]

"Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt."

Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138

[scott]

Jorge,

Bloomberg interviews Adam Sieminski fairly often and much of his prognostications for lower oil is the result of the "optimistic" economic view that our present and future global resource picture will be characterized by periods of worldwide recession that reduce demand allowing for periods of subsequent periods of growth.

This optimistic application of the business cycle represents the type of linear thinking you previously referenced.

[kd]

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of some grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."

-General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

[jorge]

Scott:

Point well taken. Linear thinking is what's brought prognostication of the end of oil to naught several times before. This is a powerful weapon that's used by peak oil deniers and it has a ring of truth to it. Linear thinking could not account for horizontal drilling, ultradeep water extraction, 3-D seismic mapping and such. The prongnosticators looked at present conditions and assumed a linear progression where y= x+z. Of course we know it didn't work like that.

Just as it hasn't worked for the ominous year 2006 (read some of JHK's previous posts and the opinions of some bloggers), which has yet to look any worse than the anno terribilis 2005. Yes, the real estate market has going definitely south, we are hemorraghing treausre and lives in Iraq, and this nation is up to its eyeballs in private and public debt. This was the year it was all supposed to collapse, but it doesn't look like it, right?

Why? Because the y= x+z equation does not apply to such a complex and chaotic framework as the interrelated activities of 6 billion humans and 200 countries.

And, as Forrest Gump would put it, that's all I got to say about that.

Cheers,

[asoka]

JHK says: "But it would be a mistake to think that Iraq was Vietnam all over again. Iraq stopped being a war for us three years ago and became a hopeless police action in a terrible neighborhood."

Newsflash: Vietnam was a police action, not a declared war.

[JoSparrow]

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/08/03/opinion/edbouck.php

For Israel, innocent civilians are fair game
Peter Bouckaert International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 2006
TYRE, Lebanon Mideast I

....

Israel's claims about pin-point strikes and proportionate responses are pure fantasy. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I've documented civilian deaths from bombing campaigns in Kosovo and Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. But these usually occur when there is some indication of military targeting: high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's regime present in a house just before it is hit, for example, or an attack against militants that causes the collateral deaths of many civilians.

In Lebanon, it's a different scene. Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars in the southern border zone, killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective.

My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths. On July 15, Israeli fire killed 21 people fleeing from Marhawin, including 13 children; no weapons, no Hezbollah nearby. On July 16, an Israeli bomb killed 11 civilians in Aitaroun, including seven members of a Canadian-Lebanese family on vacation; again, no Hezbollah, no weapons. On July 19, at least 26 civilians were killed in Srifa when Israeli bombs flattened an entire neighborhood; no evidence of military targets. On July 23, at least seven civilians were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed dozens of cars trying to flee the south after receiving Israeli instructions to evacuate immediately; no indication of weapons convoys in the vicinity. The list goes on, with about 500 civilians killed so far.

Israel says the fault for the massive civilian death toll lies with Hezbollah, claiming its fighters are hiding weapons inside civilian homes and firing them from civilian areas. But even if the Israeli forces could show evidence of Hezbollah activity in some civilian areas, it could not justify the extensive use of indiscriminate force that has cost so many lives.

[JoSparrow]

>

You don't get it remotely. Iran has the upper hand. There are no police. There is nothing the US and Israel can do short of nuking the country into submission.

What does it take to drive that point home to you neocon types? We're not geopolitically omnipotent anymore. Iran could say, "Oh, were taking a million barrels a day off line for extensive maintenence -- you know, make sure there's no pitting in our pipelines. If we find some we might need to take another few hundred thousand barrels off for a while." Oil prices would rise $25/bbl.

Now, what comparable power does Isreal or the US have? We'll pummel the shit out of your from the sky for a few days? That's not gonna work again.

Get it through your skull -- Iran isn't some kid lurking in the bushes. They're a legit player and they need to be dealt with rationally and on state-to-state terms.

[zerotsm]

Has anyone added up how much oil has been wasted fighting the Iraq war? One F-15 flight uses enough petroleum product to heat the average Northeastern home for 5 years.

The money spent on the Iraq war could have been used to build windmill farms. Enough windmills to supply one quarter of the current electrical load of the united states, and that's allowing for the fact that the wind doesn't blow all of the time.

This won't fix the transporation problem, the only real cure for the transporation problem is to do as much as possible locally and have people live closer to work.

Unfortunantly, zoning laws in a lot of places don't allow this. While one probably shouldn't live right door next to atomic power plants, or factories that use hazardous materials, there is no reason not to have combined commercial and residential buildings, so that the daily commute is a five minute walk down a flight of stairs, rather than a 2 hour drive.

[scott]

Jorge,

My point about linear thinking can also be applied to the CNN authors optimistic interpretation of the analysts remarks. The kind of optimism we commonly hear in periods of growth work in reverse in periods of no growth{recession}.

Economists often use terms such as demand destruction, recession, depression(prolonged no growth period) blandly when in reality these terms represent horrible consequences for ordinary citizens which is often manifested in the humanistic writings of anti-war types, Kuntsler and others.

[anonemus]

Hello,
As others have posted,looks like a bumper year for our government acting as a war profiteer. Anybody who thinks a swift strike on Iraq, decapitating the leadership and killing a few hundred thousand people with fuel air bombs and tac-nucs would have been preferable to current "Long War" need only read this.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13129-2321486,00.html

Looks like all the future laid-off workers may be able to find employment making bullets for export.
Now, if you don't mind I am going back to my reading of Livy.

[one Eye Open]

JoSparrow sez

"Iran could say, "Oh, were taking a million barrels a day off line for extensive maintenence -- you know, make sure there's no pitting in our pipelines. If we find some we might need to take another few hundred thousand barrels off for a while.""

Oh really? And then Iran would do what to carry on? All Iran has is oil. They can no less sell it then we can use it.