Bush doesn't get it

All this rush to get off of dependence on foreign oil just shows how much of our policy is molded by public opinion and how much that public opinion is drawn to overly simplistic answers to very complicated problems.

The economy, whether you like it or not, is global. It does no good to decrease your consumption of foreign oil when none of your trading partners do the same. All you do is reduce your direct intake of oil, but in reality your actual intake includes the oil that all countries you trade with take in. Oil is a freely traded commodity. If you don't use it, the oil just won't go back in the ground. Your reduced demand will lower the price which in turn will entice someone else to purchase it. Typically that someone else will use the oil to make some good that they will sell to you.

This makes the whole excercise sound like a zero sum game. It isn't. You must include in the added cost for not using the oil. Renewable energy is nothing of the sort. It's sold that way to the public because the public is ready for easily consumed, pie-in-the-sky ideas. Solar panels must be built not from grass but from many different materials. They power they give you may appear to be free but that's because you haven't included in the cost of producing the panel in the first place. In actuality, solar panels do not return the amount of energy they consume in production. If they did, you'd see solar panel factories running on solar panels.

People. There ain't nothing like oil. The yield it gives is so much higher than anything else that nothing can compete with it (let alone provide the luxury it affords). It's yields are close to 300%. At 0% you break even and eventually die. Nuclear is barely over 10 and Solar and Wind are negative. One day oil may run out and on that day, we'll have to make do with a lot less than we do now.

Our best solution is to be as energy efficient as we can and keep looking for VIABLE alternatives. Look at it this way. The faster we use up Arab oil, the faster this problem with radical Islam will be behind us.

A Culture Stuck in the Middle Ages

Sometimes when I'm talking to my left leaning friends and I mention the level of advancement among Muslim countries and the need for reformation, I get the feeling that they find this very distasteful to point out. It isn't. In this life or death struggle with a group of people who have different values than us, we have to get a firm grip on how they view the world. Some say that Muslims are angry over occupation and other transgressions. This is the world view of Juan Cole, who I regularly berate. We can't accept this as an answer. Not unless we want to step back in time. Iran once again invites us back by bringing up how they have been harmed by Jews existing in the Middle East. Here is the foreign minister talking about the Holocaust: "Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered. We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?" Exactly how is someone in Tehran affected by someone in Jaifa? Simply put, they chose to imagine the harm.

At one time in the Middle Ages, Christians imagined all kinds of insults done to them because of something that was rumored to have happened to other Christians. The Crusades were popular among the rable because of this very tribal way of looking at the world. A way in which you view all situations as conflict and you figure out which side you are on depending upon who's involved. Arabs have a saying about this. My brother before my neighbor, my neighbor before ....etc.

To allow Muslim nations like Iran to view the world this way makes conflict inevitable. Solving the Palestinian crisis will only allow them to move to the next grievance. Travel in the south of Spain and you will learn that there are plenty of Muslims who want the Alhambra restored. In general, conflict will not stop until all infidels are gone.

Christianity had to reform itself and then separate itself from temporal power. Until Muslims start demanding the same, this conflict will never end.

It really is the Culture

I thought I'd never see the LA Times printing an article which didn't give into the mantra of the West being the root of all evil, but Max Boot has a great perspective.

My own perspective comes from having lived in a third world country, India, for a year. There I saw how dangerous the communication gap between cultures can be. In India's case, though they have a large muslim population and an overwhelming poverty problem, they don't give into too much of the victimhood that spews from the West. Surely, you see lots of references to the "colonial yoke" of the British Raj, but mostly, Indians realize that most of their problems are of their own making. That the West does some good.

Still, we have to remember that, culturally, when the West communicates with the Middle East it is effectively talking to its past, its medieval past where your loyalty lied with your people first. England, for over a hundred years, pursued the vague notion that the French owed them something. Though the French were certainly a pain in the rump as they are today, the English did more harm to themselves by believing these fairy tales. Reading contemporary medieval writings, one can see how even intellectuals failed to look to themselves for their problems. At its height, this type of thinking was what led to Fascism and to the two great wars and hundreds of millions dead. Germany's problems in the 1930s were of their own making, not of the Jews or anyone else.

Introspection is a gift of the modern age and one that is wholly lost on the Middle East. Perhaps they will have to go through what we did.

It's the Culture, Stupid

The Nation makes a convincing argument that the recent furor over the controversial cartoons is actually more indicative of western racism than muslim intolerance. I'm always tempted to take articles from the Nation with a large dose of sodium chloride, especially ones that use the tired "blame us first" theology, but this one makes some good points. The same Danish newspaper that printed the cartoons had declined to publish provocative cartoons satirizing Easter. Double standard? Gary Younge, the author of the piece, writes: "If our commitment to free speech is important, our belief in antiracism should be no less so. Neither the cartoons nor the violence has emerged from a vacuum. They are steeped in and have contributed to an increasingly recriminatory atmosphere shaped by, among other things, war, intolerance and historic injustices. "

As with any issue, your point of view depends upon the backdrop that you wish to view it against. For Younge, the cartoons are best examined after remembering the endless list of western transgressions against the Middle East. Younge does not address the more immediate background of these events or the obvious differences with publishing satirical christian cartoons.

Should not the more appropriate background include the murder of Theo Van Gogh or the threat that Salman Rushdie still lives under? In fact, there are a host of examples of recent muslim extremism. No one would fear reprisal on the same level if the cartoons satirizing christians were printed. What the Danish newspaper did was shine the light on the 800 lb gorilla, a monster that Europeans have lived with in their midst for decades. The point is more subtle than Younge imagines. If the threat of violence can intimidate you into not printing silly cartoons, then violence becomes the language of the moment. The recent furor is, in my view, a result of Europeans engaging in a dance macabre with muslim culture over many decades: Lockerbie, Munich '72, the Achille Lauro, etc. Each time some act of violence occurs, politicians with views like Younge excuse it with multi-culturalist rhetoric.

Violence is also something the West will cover on TV and as a result, the Muslim street views this as an opportunity to be recognized in a world where they are continually marginalized by the advaces of other cultures. Essentially, in this sick codependency, it doesn't matter what the issue is about as long as there is some basis to feel insulted, to threaten violence and then to be published in newspapers and viewed on CNN. It legitimizes, even for an instance, a group of people who feel insignificant. The West keeps wondering why the riots keep going on when it's obvious that it's because they keep publicizing it. Had it gotten a short mention on the 11 o'clock news, this thing would have been history.

TV is their global language, their means of legitimacy. How else could a talentless, nameless son of rich Saudi prince be recognized on a global level except by blowing something up?

If the Europeans are considering buckling under the pressure and embracing a faustian bargain with the extremists by issuing a ban on depictions of Muhammed, they should ask that all media not cover terrorist events or to show or reprint diatribes of extremists such as Bin Laden. I would bet that if you robbed the extremists of their ability to speak on a global level, they would lose all appeal.

It will have to do

Are the Europeans learning? We still don't know. The recent sentencing of the fanatical muslim priest, Abu Hamza, was encouraging, albeit he only got 7 years. Still, this says very little to how the continental Europeans will act since the Brits have always been quicker than their neighbors to recognize an imminent threat.

Fanatical muslims have used the cover of a tolerant culture to infiltrate into societies that they hate and wish to destroy. Along with the recent riots over a few cartoons, Europeans should get a close look at radical cultures which have nothing but contempt for tolerance. Like 19th century anarchists who sought to destroy the powerful, they hate what they think they cannot have. Power corrupts the few, but weakness corrupts the many (Eric Hoffer).

It is time to speak the truth to the middle east. We cannot abide their backward cultures any more. Even if imperfectly, we must stand on principle. Reform.