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History: What a bitch.
We know she repeats her scourges upon those who don’t learn the lessons of the past. But in the case of the unfolding American march toward war with Iran, you have to ask: so fast?
We have not even acknowledged, let alone absorbed, the lessons of the war in Iraq, and here comes the sequel in Iran—Pinned in the Patch II, with all the same players and ploys: the Bush administration’s obsession with downing another Middle Eastern petroleum power: the insecure, oil-rich Muslim nation hell-bent on developing weapons of mass destruction, led by yet another “Muslim madman,” President Mahmood Ahmedi-Nejad: the Congress frozen in partisan food fighting over high energy prices: the American media beating the war drums.
Isn’t this all too familiar?
With the price of oil on world markets hovering in the $75 a barrel range, the Bush administration blames Democrats and environmentalists for blocking attempts to drill our way out of the energy crisis by opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore oil deposits.
Congressional Republicans offer new energy tax cuts to Big Oil, suspension of environmental regulations and the short-lived $100 rebate offer, which became an immediate laughingstock and was dropped.
Meanwhile, Democrats proposed to suspend gas taxes and blamed Republicans for protecting exorbitant oil company profits.
All beside the point.
Just as the invasion of Iraq was about controlling Iraqi oil, so the horlicks over Iran’s nuclear development program is fundamentally about oil, too.
Let’s be quite clear about one thing: The Iranian situation is driving the price of oil, which will likely go to $100 or more this year, unless the United States, Israel and Iran curb their enthusiasm for military confrontation.
My own sense is that now is not the moment for progressives to talk about Energy Independence. Rather, now is the moment to try to brake the juggernaut toward the next American pre-emptive war.
For once that folly begins, the political space to design an energy future through politics and diplomacy will have been lost—perhaps forever.
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