The 21st Century Oil Wars Have Already Begun

It's taken me three years to work this out...

Let it be recorded that the 21st Century Oil Wars began on September 11, 2001, when Osama Bin Laden's Al Quaeda terrorist group attacked a number of US targets including the World Trade Center. This was in response to decades of growing US military and economic support for Israel, the House of Saud and other corrupt regimes in the Middle East.

While 9/11 was spectacularly violent, killing over 3,000 innocent civilians, Bin Laden told his followers that their real target was the U.S. economy, which he threatened to cripple.

(A little must-read Wikipedia background on Bin Laden here: he first took up arms against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then called on the Saudis to oppose Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. When the Saudis brought the USA in to fix the problem, he was outraged. Presumably, if you can avoid stereotyping the man as a religious nutcase, it wasn't just about armed foreign infidels on Arab lands, it was also about the USA taking even more oil access at the expense of ordinary Arabs. It showed who the Saudi's real friends are.)

For several days after 9/11, President Bush and his top advisors went into hiding. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary for Defence, argued passionately for an attack on Iraq even though he knew it was not behind the 9/11 attack. We now know why... Rumsfeld understood Bin Laden's agenda. He knew this was not about "Terrorism" but about the US economy and "Peak Oil".

Let's have a closer look at Bush's recent "addicted to oil" comments, shall we?

Like I said earlier, it's not the first time Bush has said this. In 2001, for example, Bush stated:

"What people need to hear loud and clear is that we’re running out of energy in America."

In August 2003, a Bush energy advisor and highly respected energy investment banker, Matthew Simmons, said:

The solution is to pray. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it’s a certainty.

In 2004, Simmons predicted that an oil price of $182 per barrel (around $7/gallon at the pump) would be necessary to control consumption. Others put the figure even higher.

In 2005, a US Department of Energy report concluded:

... the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

Now back to Bin Laden, who has threatened to drive the price of oil up over $200 a barrell. On the available evidence, he is succeeding spectacularly well. His radical Islamic militancy is proving increasingly popular across the Middle East, while the USA is now so unpopular that any dreams of long-term military presence (and consequent access to oil) are increasingly unlikely.

The Oil Wars have begun, and Bush's USA is losing. Perhaps that is not a bad thing, given the immoral, hypocritical, torture-sanctioning, pre-emptive-invasions-R-Us course the USA is now charting.

Most importantly, we should understand that the REASON WHY THE US IS LOSING is mostly a result of it's own immoral, hypocritical, torture-sanctioning, pre-emptive-invasions-R-Us, USA-Number-One WHOO HOO attitude.

Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and mind.

So now go back and look at Bush's comments. When he first said the USA was "running out of energy", what he meant was: "We are going to have to invade a Middle Eastern coutry to secure our future."

And now when he says the USA is "addicted to oil", what he means is: "Whoops, we fucked up. Iraq is lost. Now what do we do?"

Yeah, what do we do?

Well, the first thing to do is to get rid of our lying, corrupt, incompetent governments. Then recognise that the oil crisis, like the Global Warming crisis, is a problem that confronts all mankind. Let us put down our weapons and face it together, as equals, and build a better world as best we can.

NOTE: Much of the above quotes and data comes from Page One(!) of Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash. Read it now!