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toward Iran's potential for belligerence. This requires steady engagement, smart diplomacy, military subtlety, and careful consideration of the complexities embodied within Iran's rich, proud, 6,000-year-old culture."
The Bush-Cheney shell game that is developing uses Iraq to justify attacking Iran and uses Iran to justify the continuing occupation of Iraq. But ultimately to what end?
As Michael Klare pointed out, no oil company will invest billions of dollars in oil production infrastructure without a stable and secure investment climate. And after nearly five years of US occupation, Iraq is no closer to having such a stable climate.
The global oil supply is starting to run out, and in response the Bush-Cheney bubba boys are running tanker loads of precious fuel into the Gulf to fuel a saber-rattling operation or worse. War, whether hot or cold, will never achieve the objective of securing oil supplies for US interests, but it might serve to obscure what is really going on.
Imagine what will happen when gas prices shoot up to $5 or $6 a gallon in the US. Now imagine how happy Dick Cheney will be if he can find an excuse to attack Iran, and Iran retaliates by disrupting the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz. Oil shortages will be blamed on Iran, and peak oil as an issue will fall off the table.
A much better strategy for the US and the rest of the world would be to act on Lester Brown's suggestion of an immediate emergency meeting of the G-8 to coordinate decisive action to reduce oil use. Such a meeting could also begin a diplomatic process such as the UN process on climate change to decide how to rationally apportion what remains of the world's oil.
In a sensible world where the grownups were in charge, governments would come up with a plan to use the last of the oil to help all nations build up their renewable energy infrastructure. We cannot afford to waste another drop of oil, either on useless consumer garbage or on war.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards - I hope you get this message.
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