Thomas Friedman has taken it on the chin of late, but I thought today's column was quite on the money. But this isn't right:
'Frankly, if I had my wish, we would be on our way out of Afghanistan not in, we would be letting Pakistan figure out which Taliban they want to conspire with and which ones they want to fight, we would be letting Israelis and Palestinians figure out on their own how to make peace, we would be taking $100 billion out of the Pentagon budget to make us independent of imported oil â?? nothing would make us more secure â?? and we would be reducing the reward for killing or capturing Osama bin Laden to exactly what heâ??s worth: 10 cents and an autographed picture of Dick Cheney. [emphasis mine]'
Thomas Friedman wrote a book about globalization, so I don't presume to lecture him on how it works, but surely he knows that "imported oil" is not the problem here. Our two main suppliers are Canada and Mexico, although our consumption does sustain high prices which helps the bad actors who export everywhere else. But that's the point. Getting off "imported oil" is not simply impossible, our participation in the oil market in any context enables those countries we don't like to continue to profit from oil. That's how a global commodity works.
To shelter America from the adverse consequences of oil consumption would entail ending our use of oil, period. That's significantly harder than just getting off imports. And as RCW contributor Daniel McGroarty has pointed out, the U.S. imports a lot of strategically vital minerals - including many that would be needed for alternative energy projects - so even if kicked our "oil addiction," we'd still be dependent on resource-rich but politically dubious nations for raw materials. That's the world.
But it's also not the real problem here. The problem with oil is that it has compelled us to meddle in the Middle East. Friedman thinks that if we got off the stuff, we'd be free to disentangle ourselves from the region. But we don't need a crash program seeded with $100 billion in Pentagon cash to stop meddling. Last time I checked, the region wasn't doing a brisk business in semiconductors, off-shore accounting or biotechnology. It sells oil, or it has no income. That's a dynamic we could leverage to our advantage without having to base a single soldier in the area.
(AP Photos)