Why Is Oil Worth Fighting For ?

[Torog]

Why Is Oil Worth Fighting For
Arab News ^ | 30 October 2004 | William F. Buckley Jr


Teresa Heinz Kerryâ??s reference to â??greed for oilâ?� can be passed over, and is being passed over, as routine political hyperbole. But maybe the time has come to examine the words and their meaning. This is so because â??oilâ?� is widely used as the great engine of human avarice. In years â?? and centuries â?? gone by, the devil word was â??gold.â?� It was gold that brought out the reserves of evil in men. It ranked with and even exceeded love and sex. Oil could not, of course, go through hobgoblinization until its uses were discovered. But now it is used as the commonplace agent of evil.

What needs to be said about oil is that it IS worth fighting for. We would all agree that air and water are necessities. Without them life instantly ends. Without oil, life does not end, but life radically changes.

If one contemplates oil as simply an agent of energy, the idea becomes instantly clearer. Every advance by mankind against the material duress of life is most easily expressed in terms of energy spared. Electrical power is generated in part by coal, by running water and by nuclear energy. But much of it is created by oil and gas. What is it that a people are willing to fight for? The security of home and hearth come first, and that is achieved mostly by weaponry; but weapons that seek to have their effects beyond the range of a cartridge of gunpowder do so, on battleships and airplanes, by the propellant force of oil.

If you are willing to die in order to protect your local hospital, then you must be willing to die for oil, because without electricity, your hospital wonâ??t take you beyond a surgeonâ??s scalpel, and a surgeon is helpless without illumination, which is provided (in many places) by oil.

To say that we must not fight for oil is utter cant. To fight for oil is to fight in order to maintain such sovereignty as we exercise over the natural world. Socialism plus electricity, Lenin said at the outset of the Soviet revolution, would usher in the ideal state. He was wrong about socialism but not about electricity. Electricity gives us whatever leverage we have over nature. To flit on airily about an unwillingness to fight for oil suggests an indifference to the alleviation of poverty at the next level after bread and water. Throw in, perhaps, the wheel. That too is an indispensable scaffolding of human power over nature. But then comes all the power not generated by the muscles of human beings and beasts of burden.

Oddly, those who speak so lightly about oil are often the most reluctant to explore seriously alternatives to it. In the history of discovery, only one such has materialized, which is nuclear power. Although nuclear power proceeds inconspicuously to light most of the lamps in France and promises to do as much in China, a mix of superstition and Luddism stands in the way of developing the nuclear alternative here.

Meanwhile, we must get on with oil, and the reserves of it are diminishing, and such great storehouses of oil as exist are mostly in the Middle East. The idea that our effort in Iraq is motivated by lust for its oil fields is easily dispelled by asking who is today profiting from such oil as is being produced in Iraq. The answer is: The Iraqis. The great need now is for increased security forces deployed to protect the oil from the nihilists and from those who reduce any consideration of oil to politics. What is achieved, that any sober judgment will approve of, by the destruction of oil fields, the kind of thing that Saddam Hussein tried to do in Kuwait in 1991?

Itâ??s unlikely, given the spook that now attaches to the mere mention of oil, that the presidential candidates will say wholesome things on the subject. But it would bring fresh air to international discourse if we heard from either or both that oil is a great natural bounty, and that we must encourage its production, guard against its despoliation, and honorably defend it as worth a total national commitment.

â?? W. Buckley is founder of the American conservative weekly National Review.

Torog Reviewed by Torog on 10-30-2004. Why Is Oil Worth Fighting For ? Why Is Oil Worth Fighting For Arab News ^ | 30 October 2004 | William F. Buckley Jr Teresa Heinz Kerryâ??s reference to â??greed for oilâ?� can be passed over, and is being passed over, as routine political hyperbole. But maybe the time has come to examine the words and their meaning. This is so because â??oilâ?� is widely used as the great engine of human avarice. In years â?? and centuries â?? gone by, the devil word was â??gold.â?� It was gold that brought out the reserves of evil in Rating: 5

[Torog]

For modern societies,oil is a strategic asset-interference with oil supplies or extortion over such a critical component of modern societies,is a cause for grave concern,which can lead to war.

Thanks to America's sap-sucking,tree-hugging environazi's,America has not invested in nuclear power or domestic oil and gas drilling and production venues as we should have done.

Because of the environazi's,America is more dependent on foreign oil supplies and lacks the refining capacity that we need..all of which-leads to higher gasoline prices,heating oil prices and increased costs across the board,for all goods manufactured from oil.

It's time,past time,to develope our domestic resources of oil and natural gas,build more refining capacity and build more nuclear plants,as well as alternative sources of energy.

With Kerry and the environazi's in charge,America's dependence on foreign oil supplies will increase,the Strategic Oil Reserve,will be raided and costs for everything across the board,will increase..couple that with a socialist agenda that requires heavy taxation-and you have a recipe for disaster.

In my crazy Torogian world,Texas will secede from the Union,and defend the Strategic Oil Reserve and refineries,from federal authorities..I would expect,that Louisianna and the rest of the Southern States-will join with Texas in secession. Thanks to the environazi's in Kalifornia,with their bans on off-shore drilling and no new refineries in the past 3 decades,Kalifornia will be unable to supply the Federal Union with enough oil. Alaska,will be welcome to join the New Confederacy,of course..thereby making the Federal Union situation even more dire.

Sounds like a pretty good idea for a book,huh ? Maybe even a made-for-tv movie of the week..lol.

Have a good one...Torog

[Torog]

" Sounds like a pretty good idea for a book,huh ? Maybe even a made-for-tv movie of the week..lol. "

Dang..maybe I should git ahold of Mel Gibson and see if he might be interested in my idea..I herby officially claim all rights to this here idea.

[clevemire]

Good luck with that idea there buddy

[psychocat]

Oil is used in thousands of ways and it is becoming harder to find , it WILL run out.

Because of this other forms of creating or harnessing energy need to be found , nuclear energy suffered set backs because of incidents like Long Island and of course Chernobyl. The other avenues being explored are Hydro, Solar, Wind and of course Hydrogen cells, oil will gradualy be phased out and energy production will be a major priority . The inability of the US to provide sufficient energy at a reasonable price will see a decline in the economy and brown and blackouts will become more common , this is why America (gov) feels the need to gain control over the existing stocks of oil even if it means fabricating bullshit about WMD and pretending they are there to liberate the people of Iraq. If Saddam was attacked as claimed because he had ties with Bin Laden then surely Bush should also be implicated.

http://www.bushnews.com/binladens.htm
http://icpj.org/afghanistan.html

[holotrope]

are you justifying the war on the basis of oil?

[Lulu]

Thanks to America's sap-sucking,tree-hugging environazi's,America has not invested in nuclear power or domestic oil and gas drilling and production venues as we should have done.

Thanks to Sellafield (60miles off east coast Ireland)
the people of Co.Louth have a 13% higher rate of cancers and birth defects than other parts of the country.

Sellafield is now more dangerous than ever. If it is hit by terrorist attack, or if an accident occurs, Dublin, Dundalk and Belfast will be uninhabitable. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, England, Scotland and Wales will also be badly affected. Like Belarus, which received 70% of the fallout from Chernobyl, Ireland did not ask for this nuclear power base to be built beside us. Itâ??s up to us all to try to shut Sellafield down.

Be careful what you wish for Torog, Thanks to British Nuclear Fuels the Irish Sea is now the most radioactive in the world

http://www.corecumbria.co.uk/tour/irishsea.htm

[Torog]

are you justifying the war on the basis of oil?

Howdy holotrope,

Nope,I ain't-however,oil is a critical component of the overall picture-and therefore cannot be ignored when planning strategically.

The main reasons for protecting the oil assets,was to prevent another disasterous enviromental event from the destruction of the well-heads,as was done in the first Gulf war,by saddam. The second reason,was to preserve the integrity of the well-heads,in order to continue to provide a source of funds for the Iraqi economy,in a post-saddam Iraq,critical for reconstruction and needed repair of infrastructure.

All 15 members of the UN Security Council,voted unanimously to authorize the use of force,in order to git saddam to comply with over 12 years of UN resolutions-therefore,the invasion of Iraq,was authorized by the UN.

Saddam,had the means,motive and opportunity,to pose a clear and present danger to the US,it was President Bush's duty,not to gamble on American security with a known and proven madman,in the form of saddam. Every time that saddam fired on US fighter jets,it was an act of war against the US,he was allowed to git away with that crap for years,because of a spineless UN and a spineless Clintoon.

[Lulu]

Att. Tony Blair

[Lulu]

Att. Prince Charles