[Rhodes22-list] WAR

[brad haslett]

Slim,

You are right about this being a classic no-win
situation.  Despite the cynical critisim of 43 and his
VP being former oil men, they should know more than
anyone what the downside of the fluctuation in the oil
market could do.  If oil drops below about $25 per
barrel domestic suppliers start shutting down.  If we
go in and start pumping cheap oil we make ourselves
even more vunerable.  The world oil market is a
complex mix of economics and politics.  In the long
run we need to wean ourselves off of hydrocarbons but
in the short run there is no substitute.  There was a
meeting in November between oil executives and
government officials about how to deal with Saddam
setting fire to the fields.  The cynics would use this
as proof that there is a vast oil conspiracy at work. 
The reality is that the world economy is more fragile
as a result of oil economics than we think and cheap
easy oil is not the panacea everyone thinks it is.  I
hope we can diffuse this thing like we did the Cuban
missle crisis but I wouldn't bank on it.

Brad Haslett
--- Steve Alm <salm@mn.rr.com> wrote:
> This looks to me to be a no-win situation.  We're
> damned if we do and damned
> if we don't.  If we go after the oil, it'll look
> like greedy, 19th
> century-style resource-grabbing.  If we're just
> trying to stabilize the
> region, i.e., going after the menacing anti-American
> regime, it'll look like
> colonization/culturalization--one of the main
> reasons the Arab world hates
> us in the first place.  Doing nothing at all doesn't
> really seem very
> acceptable either.  If our battle cry is going to be
> to avenge 9/11, and we
> go in there without much proof of WMD, it'll just
> look like an old fashioned
> lynching.  We're not really fighting for OUR oil--we
> get most of ours
> elsewhere.  But we are fighting on behalf of oil for
> our European allies.
> But they don't seem to support us so I guess Bush'll
> just do whatever he
> thinks is best for them.
> 
> America is the big dog on the block and that makes
> us everybody's problem
> AND solution.  The big dog has the biggest bark and
> bite, but also leaves
> the biggest, stinky messes to clean up.
> 
> Like it or not, and I don't, it looks like we're
> going to invade.  I can't
> think of any circumstances under which Bush would
> say, "Oh, OK.  Never
> mind."  The Iraqi army will fall like a house of
> cards, but no doubt Saddam
> has some dirty tricks up his sleeve.  There's
> speculation now that he might
> torch his own oil wells.
> 
> Slim
> 
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