Middle East

I am more than a little unhappy about what is happening in the middle east.

I think for anyone to believe we have any reason for being there other than obtaining cheap oil that the oil companies can then sell for exhorbitant prices is ludicrous.

If we had spent the money we spent just the first year prosecuting the war in Iraq on wind turbines, we would have displaced the energy equivalent of all the oil we obtain from the middle east, permanently.

But you can’t power your car with wind turbines you say? Well, no not unless your car is electric. But you displace natural gas that is presently being used for electricity generation. That natural gas can be converted into liquid fuels using Syntroleum’s process.

I believe our foreign policy towards Israel is heavily skewed by our dependence upon middle eastern oil and eliminating that dependence would allow us a more balanced foreign policy and eliminate incentives people have for coming here and blowing things up.

The situation between Irael and the Palestinians is horrid, Israel seems to think that the holocaust they experienced at the hands of the Germans justified the same treatment by them of the Palestinians. They bulldoze homes with families in them, shoot their kids, restrict their travel, and then they wonder why things get blown up.

The way you treat people has ramifications. We can’t treat the middle east the way we have and not expect things like 9/11 to happen. And no amount of border security or police state will prevent it, just as it does not prevent it in Israel.

I am not looking forward to a camera on every corner and maybe an RFID chip injected into everybody with constant monitoring of everyone. Not my idea of fun. I am already less than thrilled about warrantless phone taps, about databases containing every call I and you have ever made, about Internet monitoring and secret censorship.