I haven't been buying in to the immigration excitment, but I'm cracking.
I was readings something lastnight by someone who is supposedly something close to THE expert on suicide terrorism (Name escapes me; the book is DYING TO WIN) and what we need to do to end terrorism. He said that whatwe are doing in Iraq is about the stupidest thing we could do to stop terror and we need to do one of two things: go back to the our old policy of "off shore" influence on the middle east, (i.e. noboots on the ground in the Middle East but troops ready rearby for rapid deployement to protect our oil interests) which we had until 1991 when we left troops in Saudi after Desert Storm.
The second option, is more difficult but better he claimed: Get away from dependence on foreign oil byd eveloping alternative energy sources such that we no longer give a crap about the Middle East. The former would make terrorism almost go away, the latter he claims, would "suck the oxygen out of the air terrorists breath."
But either plan, he argued, depended on securing our borders.
I'm pondering all of this.
About Me
- Civis
- Husband, father, veteran and ENTP. If you were king, you would have a duty to rule for the common good. In order to rule for the common good, you would need to know what works and what doesn't work. To know this you would need to know a little bit about government, some history, science, psychology, theology, religion et al. If "we the people" rule, we have a similar duty to our country. My handle is "Civis", because I take citizenship seriously.
3 comments:
Just wanted you all to know that Alex C sent me a forward about your blog and I have been following along. Can't contribute much as of yet since I haven't started the book, but thanks for posting!
-E.F.
Thanks for posting. I like the name. Tell AC we have been wondering why he is so quiet.
Civis,
Two points:
1. For the immediate future, there's really no need to develop alternative energy sources to meet our oil needs; we have plenty of domestic oil that is just being ignored. I'm all in favor of alternative energy sources but as a former Alaskan resident, the dependence on middle eastern oil just baffles me. If "environment" is really the issue, then is there some reason to be less concerned about oil spills in the middle east (or migration patterns of Arabian caribou) than oil spills in Alaska?
2. Even if we were no longer artifically dependent on Middle Eastern oil, that would not stop the political pressure to remain involved in Middle Eastern affairs. That pressure is driven, I think, by two symbiotic forces: Zionism (with all the emotional force of the Holocaust behind it) and Right Wing Evangelicalism, with its millennial eschatology.
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