Originally posted to
Blog and Tan.
In an attempt to give credit where credit is due, I'd like to give credit to the Bush administration's energy policy. Dick Cheney headed the administration's energy task force in 2001, behind a thick wall of secrecy that Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club were unable to penetrate. It was only recently revealed in mid-November of last year that
oil executives were invited to meet with the task force, and as I've blogged before, the task force's documents included
maps of Iraqi as well as Saudi Arabian oil fields.
Since the information was cloaked in secrecy for so long, and as oil executives are today
refusing to testify at a senate hearing regarding the effect of oil company mergers on today's high prices, either we have to believe it's going according to plan or it's going very poorly. If the energy policy were having no real effect on oil prices, there'd be no reason to hide its activities. The "it's going very poorly" argument would assert that our occupation of Iraq is not helping supply, and that we haven't secured enough alternative sources. However I think it's more likely that things are going "very well," as Cheney and his energy-corporation buddies are
raking in record profits to the tune of a quarterly profit of $10.7 billion for Exxon-Mobil.
Let's think about this. The United States, the
#1 consumer of oil in the world, has undertaken a costly "pre-emptive" war, in a country where it turned out there wasn't anything to pre-empt in the first place, and by doing so we coincidentally established a military presence in a country with the world's
second-largest proven oil reserves. However, partly due to our lack of preparation for the invasion and especially for securing the peace after toppling Saddam, oil producers add what Wes Clark calls a "geostrategic risk premium" to the cost they pass on to consumers. As a result, gasoline prices are at record sustained highs and oil companies are turning record profits. Sounds like success to me!
Wes Clark, in his speech from yesterday called "
The Real State of the Union 2006," lists the invasion of Iraq as one of our country's post-9/11 bad judgments, in which we found ourselves
...neglecting North Korea, and ducking the diplomacy on Iran - and labeling it all with a bellicose-sounding strategy of preemption leaving us concentrating on the least urgent strategic problem.
We may have defanged a dictator who gased his own people, but that dictator was the least pressing problem in terms of
American security. In a wide-ranging analysis, Clark forcefully observes that "many believe that this Administration lacks the basic decency to respect its political opponents, and the fundamental integrity to adhere to the usual standards of transparency, honesty, and ethics in government."
Addressing foreign policy, Clark makes a scary statement (emphasis added):
A Forty Year War on Terrorism - which I have heard trumpeted more than once in this town - and which may well be required, particularly if we continue on this course - simply fails to provide the comprehensive strategy - comparable to deterrence and containment in the Cold War - necessary to guide American policy abroad or direct needed change at home. We are a nation adrift, and America senses this.
When it comes to energy policy, some of that transparency and honesty would be very welcome when it comes to understanding the consistently high prices, and high profits, that are by now well-established in the 6th year of the Bush regime. And in seating that energy policy within a complete domestic and foreign policy framework, Bush has much to learn from the General.