Commentary: No Oil In Afghanistan

Back in 1973 I discovered the works of Raymond Chandler and spent six months or so pouring through everything the crime writer had written. First I devoured the Phillip Marlowe novels, most of which had been popularized on film by Humphrey Bogart, and then gulped-down all of the short stories the writer had written for the great pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask.

One of the stories that still sticks in my mind was called No Crime In The Mountains. In this story, Chandler’s big city detective found himself in a small California tourist community. As you would expect from a crime writer, a body shows up, but the local sheriff swears that it can’t be a murder because there is “no crime in the mountains.” As far as the local peace keeper was concerned, crime may run rampart in Los Angeles, but not in bucolic rural settings. He was wrong, of course.

It occurs to me that we are facing the same sort of denial in regards to our current “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan. In this case, our denial isn’t about crime – certainly the events that led up to our military involvement is about mass murder on a scale not seen since the days when Pol Pot ruled the day in Cambodia. This time we’re in denial about oil – and the importance that the black liquid plays in our current military exploits. After all, there’s no oil in Afghanistan so it would seem that, for once, we are militarily engaged in a mid-east conflict that has nothing to do with oil or America’s energy needs.

We are wrong, of course. To paraphrase George W. Bush: Let there be no mistake, this war is all about oil.

Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the rest of the thugs that perpetrated the attack on America do not (and can not) operate in a vacuum. They would not be able to recruit operatives to take part in attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Cole or U.S. Embassies abroad without a great deal of popular support. Remember, one of the things that we found shocking after the collapse of the twin towers in New York was that the world was not uniformly mourning our fate. We were appalled to learn that there were people who both supported the terrorists actions and regarded them as heroes and freedom fighters.

Even moderate Arabs in countries like Jordan and Egypt have mixed feelings about our country. On one hand, they admire what we have been able to do for ourselves. They look upon our freedoms and our economy with a great deal of awe and respect. At the same time, however, they are confused and resentful because our policies in many Arab areas work against their own aspirations for freedom, self determination and a prosperity that is available to all. Throughout much of the Arab world, we form alliances and support regimes that are overtly repressive. As has been pointed-out on Politically Incorrect recently, we Americans love freedom so much that we horde it for ourselves – or so it would seem to many in the third world.

This is an important crux in our war against terror. So long as there are large numbers of people in Arabia and elsewhere who see the United States as being part of their problems rather than a hope for their future, then our fight against the terrorists, no matter how righteous, is probably doomed to failure. Even if we were successful in killing every single terrorist on the planet, they will only be replaced by more so long as we are seen by so many as being against the self-determination of the third world.

Why then don’t we take the high road? Why don’t we tell the Saudi’s, for example, that there will be no more AWACS and no more military advisors until you start making moves toward democracy and start improving your human rights record? The answer is simple: the cost of such actions would be much too high. We are so dependent upon OPEC oil that we don’t dare do anything that would threaten the stability of entrenched regimes and possibly stop the operations of the pipelines. To do so would be economic suicide.

Back in the 1970s, during the gasoline shortages that marked the Nixon and Carter administrations, there was a serious movement in this country to develop alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, as soon as the oil resumed flowing through OPEC’s pipes again, we abandoned that effort and, at the same time, learned new and better ways to build big gas guzzling vehicles. If we had stayed the course, and continued in our efforts to quickly develop solar, wind and other exciting energy possibilities, by now we would probably be energy independent and not hostages of the OPEC governments. In that case, we could afford to truly do the right thing to win a real victory against terrorism.

As it is, we’re stuck in a lose-lose situation. We can’t afford to do the right thing – and we can’t afford not to.

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