Neocons and Oil -- (a different and still nonsensical approach)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the neocons aren't in bed with Big Oil -- they want to manupulate the oil market in such as way as to harm the economic interests of Arab oil producers -- it's just a means to that end. Normally they're of a doctrinaire laissez-faire orientation on economic policy, but when "market solutions" benefit Arabs, they're all in favor of U.S. government intervention. In the Iraq war planning, that took the form of a (harebrained and impractical, as I pointed out) scheme to flood the market with Iraqi oil after the invasion, thwarted by the Iraqi insurgents and the total disinterest of the people who actually drill for oil -- Big Oil.

Now, since it was obvious that was going to fail by summer 2003, they're trying to sell the idea of cutting dependence on oil -- an objective which has a good deal of merit for some other reasons, though it's extremely unlikely that any such policy would make the U.S. completely "energy independant" any time in the foreseeable future. The organization is called the "Institute for the Analysis of Global Security" (IAGS), and (no surprise here) headed by an Israeli citizen. Conservatives pushing "green" technologies like solar power and windmills? Well, only NEOconservatives, the rest of the plain old conservatives are still in bed with Big Oil, at least on this issue.

Try googling "IAGS" and "Foundation for the Defense of Democracies" or "American Enterprise Institute." The co-sponsor a bunch of things, and appear to be more or less subsidiaries of AEI, for promotional purposes at least.

Anyway, the neocons couldn't give a sh-- about "green" energy or energy independence per se, what they want to do is "de-fund" Arab governments, whether that's by glutting the market or by reducing demand (both unlikely to happen, especially in today's tight oil market). What they hope to do is "heighten the contradictions" in Arab socities, which will hopefully (they think) lead to revolutions. There's a strange similarity to the extreme (Communist) left here -- the dialectic of history, the need to make things reach the breaking point so that sweeping change can occur, "heightening the contradictions" etc -- which isn't surprising since some of them spent their college years as fans of the extreme Left. (Hence, the "neo" part of neocons.)