America's Place in the World

Bush is finishing up his begging, er traveling, in the Middle East today. What a sad place America is in today. Bush, while visiting the Saudis, begged (at least as far as diplomacy is concerned) with the Saudis to work with OPEC to lower oil prices. "The oil prices are crushing our economy." "We're you're biggest customer." On, and on. This is sad. After the Saudi oil minister said no, OPEC is happy with the situation, Bush went over his head to talk to King Abdullah himself and beg. Wow. What a wonderful place America is at today.

Now, I'm not going to blame all our problems on Bush or this administration. The oil crisis has been looming for years and NOONE did anything to prepare for it. Many of the lax financial policies were in place before Bush's presidency. Though, again, nothing was done to put any oversight over the financial sector. The flight of manufacturing jobs has been going on for years and remember, NAFTA was signed on Clinton's watch as was renewing China's "Most Favored Nation" status. But Bush has done nothing to solve the problems caused by these agreements and has allowed plenty that exacerbates them.

What I am angry about is that Bush and his administration has done so much to bring the US down in the world's eyes. The rest of the world has always had a love/hate relationship with America. I understand this. But starting wars, bullying allies, ignoring any advice from outside countries time and again, and now that our economy is poised on the brink of a recession, is begging for lower oil prices. Hmm, why on earth would OPEC listen?

The US has had YEARS to implement plans to start weaning ourselves off foreign oil and we've done next to nothing about it. Congress has consistently ignored the problem not passing tougher standards and not investing money is alternative fuel research until relatively recently. Sorry folks, ethanol is not the long term solution. At least not from corn. Possibly from switchgrass, but not corn.

I guess I don't like to see my country begging for a handout, which is what I feel Bush is doing. We've made our bed, we're going to have to sleep in it. I just hope and pray that the next administration will make some wiser choices than the previous 2 or 3 have. I don't expect immediate changes. It will take a number of years for smart policies to actually start to work. But first, we need some smart policies.

Government Logic

Bush, on his tour of the Middle East, was speaking today in Saudi Arabia about his intention to sell JDAM laser-guided bomb kits to them, among other weapons. The Saudis already have lots of top of the line military equipment we've sold them, first to contain Saddam, now to wave a big stick at Iran, who Bush said today is "the world's leading state sponsor of terror." That is quoting from a Reuters report.

Now, I agree, to an extent, that Iran is a big sponsor of terrorism, especially in Iraq. What I find ironic is that Saudi Arabia is the biggest civilian sponsor of terrorism in the world. Remember Osama Bin Landen? He's Saudi. Most of the 9/11 hijackers? Saudis. Tons of terrorist money comes from the oil rich Saudis. (Not nearly all, but plenty.) Don't believe the lie that terrorism, at least of the Islamist variety, is because of the poor and oppressed. The rich and opulent manipulate the poor and oppressed to blow themselves up for Allah. Is this a defense of how the US and the West tends to treat poorer countries? No, look at the rest of my statements. I've just gotten tired of people attempting to use that excuse for terrorism.

Now, I just love the Bush government's logic. We invade Iraq, who had nothing at all to do with 9/11 or Islamist terrorism in general. But we're selling hi-tech weapons to the Saudis who have been VERY slow to crack down on support for terrorism from their own citizens. This is a country with some of the most repressive laws on earth. Their treatment of women and minority religious groups is atrocious. And, we're stopping terrorism by selling them weapons.

I'm sorry, but this makes me sick. It really does. If you look at the history of the 20th century American foreign policy of attempting to play countries off each other, it hasn't worked well for us. Usually, it turns around to bite us in the rear. Just remember folks, we were selling Saddam weapons in the 80s to keep Iran at bay. That worked well for us.

I'm sick of our foreign policy hypocrisy. We claim to be for democracy around the world, and then ally ourselves closely with repressive governments, who quite frankly don't like us. This is not a good thing. I understand that we need to be on speaking terms with countries. I'd prefer Iran was one of them as well (not that diplomacy would do anything, but merely to show we're the white hats). But being on speaking terms is far different from selling them billions of dollars of hi-tech weaponry. I just hope whoever is next in the White House realizes this. Oh wait, we still have an oil based economy, that's right.