OIL PRICES: YOU CAN PAY ME AT THE PUMP OR YOU CAN PAY ME AT THE PENTAGON

Jerome Doolittle at Bad Attitudes:

PAYING AT THE PENTAGON
“Congress Approves Doubling U.S. Troops in Colombia,” a New York Times headline said today. The war on drugs, no doubt? But drugs are only one of Colombia’s exports to the United States. Its more important product is oil.

Here’s part of a detailed report on our ongoing oil wars, by Michael Klare of Hampshire College:

American leaders have responded to this systemic challenge to stability in oil-producing areas in a consistent fashion: by employing military means to guarantee the unhindered flow of petroleum. This approach was first adopted by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations after World War II, when Soviet adventurism in Iran and pan-Arab upheavals in the Middle East seemed to threaten the safety of Persian Gulf oil deliveries.

It was given formal expression by President Carter in January 1980, when, in response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran, he announced that the secure flow of Persian Gulf oil was in “the vital interests of the United States of America,” and that in protecting this interest we would use “any means necessary, including military force.” Carter’s principle of using force to protect the flow of oil was later cited by President Bush the elder to justify American intervention in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, and it provided the underlying strategic rationale for our recent invasion of Iraq.

To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To the president with the most powerful armed forces in the world, everything looks like a war. It never occurs to him that no country — ally, vassal, or deadly enemy — has yet figured out how to drink its surplus oil. No, all you can do with the stuff is sell it.

Just ask Texas oil investor Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. Mr. Wyatt gets the point, and very profitably too. Once all that beautiful oil is on the tankers, it flows toward the money. Anybody’s money.

And because we pay at the Pentagon instead of at the pump, it never occurs to us that our gas prices are the highest in the world.