“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
Winston Churchill
Anti-communist Churchill made an alliance with the Soviet Union. Hitler was the greater threat. It was war. You do what you need to do.
President Biden will be asking a favor of Saudi Arabia.
The American citizenry isn't accustomed to sacrificing when America fights its wars. We turn war over to specialists in an all-volunteer military. We don't raise taxes to pay for wars; we add the cost to the deficit. We do drone strikes and drop bombs on others far away and out of sight; we don't expect to get attacked here. Foreign wars are popular, at least at first. We like wars where we think we are doing the right and moral thing. We watch how it plays out and expect no particular inconvenience.
Our involvement in the war in Ukraine is popular. People wear yellow and blue. After all, we can't just sit back and watch Russia steamroll over Ukraine, we say. This is 1938 all over again, we say. We had to do something, and we are. We are sending Ukraine arms and we are trying to disrupt the primary source of income for Russia, its sale of oil to the world, with sanctions and import bans.
The results are predictable. We are taking oil off the market so we see a conspicuous increase in the price of gasoline at the pump. The American public appears to consider this a surprise and an error. Why should a proxy war with a major oil supplier have any effect on the American consumer? Someone in government must have screwed up! News stories describe the shock and distress over gasoline prices returned to the inflation-adjusted level we had eight years ago. We want the low prices that came with the recent COVID recession.
We are at war. Russia produces 10% of the world supply of oil. Oil is about 54% of the final cost of a gallon of gasoline, and disruptions brought the world price to $120/barrel this week, up from $40/barrel a year ago. Gasoline prices have doubled in the past year. Gasoline prices are far higher elsewhere, but Americans expect war to hurt others, not themselves. Biden is in political trouble. Voters blame him.
Americans are making an ugly choice. It is the kind of choice that happens in wartime. To disempower Russia we need to empower Saudi Arabia and tacitly accept their behavior. The American consumer has spoken.
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8 comments:
War sucks. The first victim is truth, followed by the civilian population. Because of its toll in devastation and human misery, it should only be resorted to as a last resort, but too often it isn't.
Our principled stand against Russia's wanton invasion would be more convincing if we hadn't been guilty of the same thing.
This is not new. This has been US policy for decades.
The culture of the Middle East might someday become favorable to democracy. Not anytime soon. If anything points out the immeasurable value and preciousness of our system it is the perniciousness of authoritarianism in other countries. Once a despot gains control it becomes very difficult to dislodge them as is evidenced all around the World.
Russian oil is funding the war and only by devaluing it can we hope to give them pause. So, yes, if it helps to sacrifice to maintain peace and deter Russian aggression this is a small price. However, I would like to see oil companies contribute the windfall profits they will see, and more efforts to curtail the price gouging that is accompanying the inflation we are experiencing.
Unfortunately the Republican party is undermining democracy here, by cynically trying to attach blame to the Biden administration for a situation they only marginally can influence.
People should indeed be troubled by the way Biden is responding to domestic and foreign policy crises, if not quite for the reasons adduced in this post. (No, we are not at war).
The violent death of a Saudi national at the hands of his countrymen in another Muslim country is of comparatively little moment, occasional WaPo opinion columns notwithstanding.
Biden's Saudi overtures occur as he plays footsie with the region's worst actor, Iran, as did his former boss, at the expense of Israel and a fledgling Sunni security alliance.
Gas prices rose steadily from the day Biden took office, in correlation with his avowed antipathy, backed by policies, to domestic energy production, especially on federal land.
The "Putin price hike" excuse might fly had Biden not vainly used the Strategic Oil Reserve to effect an optics-driven two-cent a gallon price drop months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
This is the buffoon who first absolved his team on the ongoing baby formula fiasco on the grounds that is was not predictable, THEN that they'd actually been on top of it for months.
Biden will restore America's status abroad, we were told. Instead, he's as much of a laughingstock as his predecessor, just for feeble incompetence instead of reckless bravado.
Although the cliche “history is always written by victors” isn’t 100% accurate, the history of the United States, as taught in the schools I attended, surely sports the theory.
For a very interesting set of data re oil prices, oil prices as a percent of income, and many more data, I recommend perusing https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/shopping/cars/604410/gas-prices-around-the-world
China has something like 1 million Uighurs imprisoned in slave labor concentration camps. We still do massive amounts of business with them. Yet the outcry over Khashoggi is much louder. Why is that?
Here’s a quote from Tom Robbins’ novel, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues:
“The brain, our most important organ, in the opinion of the brain.”
The same could easily be said of journalism.
America was energy independent when Trump was in office. We didn't need to beg the Saudis.
When Biden took office, he publicly declared his opposition to oil, he cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, he reduced oil leases, he pushed the New Green Deal, and he made getting oil permits more difficult. Everything Biden did was intended to make oil more expensive and scarce. Now Joe lies, and says it wasn't his fault. I'm not stupid, and it was/is Joe's fault. It was intentional. Joe will go down in history as the biggest lowlife crook president in history. Joe Biden is owned by China. Everything that Joe Biden does is a failure. Joe Biden is worse than Jimmy Carter. Joe didn't legitimately get 10 million more votes than Obama the Messiah got, while campaigning in his basement.
Rather than deal with the killers in Iran and Saudi Arabia, who want to slit our throats, Joe could easily undo some of his previous screw-ups, and open the Keystone Pipeline, increase oil leases in America, make getting oil permits easier to do, and NOT press financial institutions to discriminate against oil drillers so that they can get financing. We have more than enough oil in America to deal with this problem without going to the Saudis. Whether you drill in America or drill in Saudi Arabia, the environmental impact is the same, and the cost is less in America.
Every crisis we face today, whether it's the baby formula shortage, or the gas shortage, or inflation and high food prices, or the supply-chain problem, or the crisis at the border, was man-made by Joe Biden and his stooges. Is Joe Biden going to blame Vlad Putin for the 1.5 million illegal invaders who've crossed our southern border in the past year? The buck stops with a real leader. Joe Biden is a demented senile joke who tries to blame everybody else for his failures. Biden and Harris.....what big effing jokes. And the middle-class is being destroyed intentionally.
Curt Ankerberg
Medford, OR
When Russian forces crossed the border of Ukraine to seize territory, the Western world awoke to war on their doorstep. Bidden's leadership helped the EU and NATO formulate a response to Putin's theater-style medieval siege warfare to contain its spread. Switzerland, Sweden and Finland joined demonstrating the real and true threat of Putin's War. The alliance of the West is a complicated network of political ideology and history. The real threat of nuclear warfare is tempering direct military action. What is occurring now is an emerging Cold War to contain a monster.
One weapon in any war is public opinion. Currently, we in the US favor supporting Ukraine. However the effects of sanctions are boomeranging rising cost of oil and gas. Fuel is the foundation of our economy. In 70 years this is the first time a war is affecting our guns and butter economy. This time, though no physical act of war against us, a war in Europe has already driven nations into alignment either in opposition to Putin's War or in support by authoritarian governments.
Public opinion is weak link in continuing to support Ukraine. Presently the out of power party in the US is making political hay out of the real economic discomfort we are feeling in attempt win power in the next election without a clear policy objective.
The consequences of doing nothing are grim. If Bidden can not find allies in Congress then he must seek aid and assistance where he can, even from unsavory characters.
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