Public’s top national security concern: oil
Democracy Corps released its latest strategy memo and poll results earlier today. It’s worth taking a look at the entire memo: it’s all about national security and the November election. However, one finding caught my eye. Apparently, the public now considers dependence on foreign oil to be the nation’s top national security concern –more important than terrorism or Iraq. Forty-two percent of those polled identified dependence on foreign oil as one of their top two concerns. That’s more than fifteen points higher than fighting terrorism (twenty-six percent) or the Iraq war (twenty-five percent). Is Democracy Corps simply tapping into anger over gas prices or is something more fundamental going on here?
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Comments (8)
It seems logical to deduce that terrorism and Iraq are inexorably tied to oil. After all, our interest in the Middle East is not in building sand castles or studying Muslim culture.
For Israel, war and peace resides purely with its relations with the Palestinians. For the U.S., war and peace in the Middle East resides purely on oil.
The logical progression would be to develop an alternative to oil. Doing so would have the twofold effect of eradicating our reliance and interest in the Middle East while once again putting the United States to the forefront of technological advancement.
The problem, of course, is the oil lobby. Profits from oil are at an all-time high. How can we expect energy companies to phaze out oil if the windfalls are so lucrative?
It is unfortunate that Bush is tied at the hip to Big Oil, but I am far from being convinced that any president, no matter their affiliation, can overcome the oil lobby. In some ways it is more powerful than government.
September 7, 2006 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think people have finally started to understand that oil isn't just related to issues like terrorism and Iraq - it's a root cause. A meta-problem. Decreasing our oil dependency isn't just a worthy goal in and of itself - though reasonable prices at the pump are admittedly tantalizing - it would make solving so many other problems easier. Even my die-hard Republican parents understand that.
Personally, I was kinda ticked that Kerry didn't emphasize his "Apollo Project of the 21st Century" idea more during the 2004 election, to become energy-independent in a decade (it was a decade, right? well, if not it should be). Kinda ticked, but that's because I'm a fan of the issue, not because I expected the public to go for it.
But I will be absolutely beside myself if the Dem candidate doesn't emphasize it in 2008. With gas prices, Katrina, and the worsening mess in the Middle East, energy independence has evolved into a no-brainer issue that even die-hard Republicans can't deny, they just try and focus their sheep on things like ANWR as if that would sufficiently solve the problem.
Thanks for pointing this out, Peter.
September 8, 2006 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
This should be a natural winner for Democrats, and one national security area in which they enjoy a built-in credibility advantage. Republicans are now heavily identified in the public mind with big oil.
September 8, 2006 4:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even the US military sees the problems of depending on oil. Not only does it require convoys to deliver generator fuel, the heat signature of those generators is worrisome. They are asking for more solar and wind generators for field use.
Seems it's no longer weird guys with beards but steely-eyed field commanders that want freedom from oil. And it's no dream but ready to go, as the US military is already one of the largest users of non-oil generators. Four wind turbines went up at Guantanomo last year.
September 8, 2006 6:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
The biggest problem, I see, in moving away from oil based energy is that altenatives are generally decentralized as compared with the extraction, shipment and distribution of oil. Albeit nuclear energy is centralized and that may be the prime reason this country may end up moving to nuclear energy.
The reason that a transition to a decentralized energy production will be difficult is that by being decentralized it does not produce the political power to garner adequate subsidies and to externalize costs as big oil has been able to do.
I suggest that by addressing this problem we can do a lot to move this country into a post oil economy, non-nuclear economy.
September 8, 2006 7:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
And each time the mideast crisis heats up a little, the price of oil shoots up and the Muslim nations get more billions of dollars. Since they are being paid handsomely for each crisis, there are many crises.
On top of that, the radical Muslims see this God-given oil as a sign that they are supposed to wage war against the West. And secular types like Saddam Hussein just see it as a way to pay for arms.
Foreign oil wouldn't be a problem if the Muslims didn't have all that oil revenue to make trouble with. It's not getting the oil that's hurting the US, it's paying the Muslims. So we should stop paying them.
Seizing the oil fields will permit us to invigorate the world economy by lowering oil prices for everyone. It's the only solution that is not a temporary, stop-gap solution.
Neither the Muslim masses nor their dictators have earned the right to be wealthy off the creativity of the West. (Not that the masses are actually very wealthy, except in parts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia). It's only a fetishistic attachment to private property that induces the "Liberal" West to subsidize the Islamic Jihad.
Progressives the world over must support the internationalization of world oil supplies.
September 8, 2006 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I see now that Greg Palast and Matt Pascarella are facing homeland security charges for filming a "sensitive national security site" owned by Exxon Petroleum in connection with a film about New Orleans. If this is true I'd say that we can extend your comment to say that Big Oil is more powerful than goverment in many ways.
Maybe now we can start seeing some of the real reasons Bushco is fighting for such draconian overhaul of the Bill of Rights.
September 8, 2006 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seizing oil fields is precisely a stop-gap move. It fills the gap until those seized fields stop producing. I'll disregard the insanity of trying to control that much hostile territory. And if you think oil companies would lower prices after gaining control you're dreaming. Why on earth would they deliberately earn less for their shareholders? Only national oil companies can make that kind of decision, like Venezuela's. Then again, there's the little problem of morally justifying a war over property.
The obvious way to drive down oil prices is to stop buying. Since a sudden crash in oil prices would bring down a number of governments in the Middle East, with unknown consequences, it's a good thing that it can't happen overnight (witness the dislocations and undemocratic reults of the sudden collapse of Soviet power). Nonetheless, it will happen.
Depending on other countries for a strategic resource is stupid if avoidable (and it is avoidable). Do you forget that both Japan and Germany ran out of oil in WWII?
September 8, 2006 8:30 AM | Reply | Permalink