Today’s quote for discussion comes from our own Brandon Friedman’s book, The War I Always Wanted, which I highly recommend, and not just because I think he should be rich and famous.
Buy The War I Always Wanted at Amazon.
“The argument that oil’s not worth fighting for… or that you shouldn’t go to war for cheap oil – that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” A U.S. Air Force vet was making the case in the heart of Cairo’s old section…
“Oil’s pretty goddamn important if you ask me,” he continued. “Our whole fucking economy is based on it. Our whole way of life is designed around easy access to oil… You know,” he said, “if only a few countries had fresh water and they didn’t want to share it, or they wanted to jack up the prices, don’t you think we’d have a real gripe with ’em? Don’t you think it would be worth fighting for?”
I said, “Yeah, but, I mean, water’s water. You can live without oil.”
“Yeah, you can live without oil, but then how the fuck are you going to get home from here? What are you gonna do for a living in a non-oil-based economy when you get there? No cars, no planes… you gonna be a farmer? And plow a field? Oil is the single most important resource we have. And it belongs to everyone. Just because it is under a few select countries, it doesn’t make it their oil. It’s the world’s oil.”
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As for the water is water part, the human body’s stress response is designed to modify the mind to acquire things, such as food and water, when homeostasis is threatened. Dehydration and starvation can literally make one mad. People will do crazy things when chronically stressed. It’s a design feature.
We have now designed our lives around oil to such an extent that suddenly losing it would cause food and water shortages, and hence direct threats to homeostasis. However, because there was no direct threat to homeostasis, only projected threats, and a desire to control the flow (raw power), the whole exercise of pre-emptive war cannot even be covered with the fig leaf of survival.
Under these circumstances, the war was obviously completely inconsistent with the notion of national sovereignty and the rule of law. Besides, let’s say that oil = water: wouldn’t you try to negotiate the commodity’s future first, rather than make a unilateral act of war?
running out of oil next week, next year, next decade. We don’t need Iraq’s oil. We aren’t using it.
point being made straightforwardly. Of course, there IS an argument to be made that we are so dependent on oil that we would have to go to war for it, should we be running out of it, for our very survival. That’s a discussion worth having.
But that’s not the situation.
Yeah, only we use a rather disproportionate share of it, don’t we? And I guess sovereignty isn’t important unless it’s our sovereignty.
Breathtaking hypocrisy. Like this bozo cares about “the world.”
Any bets he’d be saying “the oil belongs to everyone” if it was mostly found under the U.S.?
on fossil fuels (oil and coal) which when utilized as we do for food, transport and comfort are heating the planet to the point that it won’t be habitable for the species.
Americans’ arrogance in thinking we can maintain our lifestyles by destroying a nation (or two?) and raiding their oil will make our descent into the world of the future -without oil (or water)- especially harrowing.
in some ways. My dad believed in green way before it was cool. He spent hours drawing up plans for earthships when I was a kid, ways we can all live without needing to heat and cool our living spaces so much and having them naturally heated and cooled. It fascinated him even though nobody wanted to listen much and even fewer people wanted to see what living that way would be like. I learned from my father that the possibilities are endless if you only venture in that direction. It means though that those who are intrenched in our old energy supply system will fight us because they will lose the wealth and power they have now if they don’t go with the change and they really don’t want to change. They have a great deal right now so fuck everyone else. I’m not afraid of a world without oil, I rejoice in it. I rejoice in the connected communities that will transpire because people are so disconnected from each other right now in my country they seem to suffer from a sort of solitary confinement syndrome. They are very unhappy and being so are running extremely low on compassion. In Europe they have diesel hybrids and whole housing developments built to be extremely energy efficient. In Korea the rooftops are decorated in solar hot water heaters……..that was seven years ago. And they also already used those funky new light bulbs, they are only new to America but not South Korea where the energy grid doesn’t resemble ours. Americans are energy pigs for no reason other than they can be. I’m not afraid, let’s go, let’s get there, I want to live in that other world and I want to live there today.
adapted, oil is not water it is a fuel that feeds our current technology and grids. If the money that has poured into this war was applied to funding and developing affordable alternatives to oil, we wouldn’t have to revert to our most base and destructive instincts. However this would mean that our current ‘life style’ would have to evolve and accommodate the reality of both sustainable energy and communities, and consumption.
It would also mean an end to the dinosaurs of giant corporations who control both our governments and our concepts of progress, I for one welcome it. People are not helpless they are infinitely resourceful. The choice of killing off the planet, each other, for a technology and economy which has nothing but short term profit in it’s sites is the height of stupidity. Sorry don’t buy it. As FDR said”these policies are not only amoral, there bad economics’. (or something close)