Top advisor: "our military is stretched by the imperative to protect the world’s oil supplies"

[Leopolds Ghost]

As some of us (Elsewhere's Daughter, the few serious anti-FISA folks)
have been warning on DU, the Obama campaign said this. Not McCain.

http://blogs.wsj.com/agenda/2008/07/30/is-it-time-for-more-drilling-or-less-oil/

Here's Obama in the Washington Post:

"The war in Afghanistan has to be our central focus, the central front in our
battle against the terrorists... if we wait until the next administration, it
could be a year before we get those troops on the ground."

Here's Obama in Time Magazine, in his own editorial:

(in the very issue "Afghanistan: The Right War" that dares to issue a rebuttal
challenging the conventional wisdom of Obama and McCain that Afghanistan needs
to be escalated) :

"Let me be clear -- my plan would not abandon Iraq.
It is in our strategic interest to maintain a residual force
that will go after Al Qaeda, train Iraqi security forces
and protect essential U.S. interests."

"But we must recognize that the central front in the war on Terror
is not in Iraq... the central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ...
I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan."

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. A mis-statement, or a reflection of Obama's rightward-drifting policy?

which is increasingly, Adrian Fenty-like, (the neoliberal mayor of DC --
every Dem city has one, since they control the party at the local level)
-- drifting vaguer and vaguer in its base appeals while concentrating on
what Obama views as the "Reagan center", i.e. the Reagan right of the
American populace, which the Dems are now seeking to appropriate, modeling
their campaign on Reagan's 1980 campaign (per E.J. Dionne). Economists,
anti-civil libertarians, and proponents of Clinton-style privatization,
who are Obama's new Fenty-like constituency.

[islandmkl]

2. i guess i read the whole context of that comment somewhat differently...

from: http://blogs.wsj.com/agenda/2008/07/30/is-it-time-for-more-drilling-or-less-oil/
emphasis mine:

Heather Zichal is an energy policy adviser to the Obama campaign.


For decades, Washington has promised the nation energy independence but when it has come to making the tough decisions to put America on secure footing Washington has blinked. Once again, we find ourselves suffering at the mercy of energy markets that are beyond our control. Consumers are suffering, our foreign policy is constrained, our military is stretched by the imperative to protect the world’s oil supplies and our environment is threatened. In response to appropriate public outcry, many in Washington are going back to the old play book. They give the big speech about energy independence and then support little ideas that will only perpetuate the status quo. Opening up additional areas of our coastlines for drilling and proposals like the gas tax holiday are emblematic of these small ideas. It is time for America to step up to the reality that the only way to regain a measure of control over our economic destiny is to increase our efficiency while we develop alternatives to oil.

Senator Obama recognizes the important role that existing domestic production plays and supports further production on the vast areas that are open for drilling but have yet to be developed. McCain’s plan to allow drilling won’t result in a drop of oil for seven years, and by his own account will have mainly a “psychological” impact, but won’t affect prices. All current government estimates also indicate that even if we drilled along all of our coastlines we would not produce enough oil to alter global production and reduce prices here at home. As long as we are dependent upon oil, our fate is linked to decisions in other countries. It is time for national leaders to support policies that match our own rhetoric. More drilling on the OCS might give Senator McCain a talking point to take home for the next election but it simply doesn’t measure up to the challenges we face. Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is time for change.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. The advisor in the WSJ described protecting oil in Iraq as an "imperative".

They also say NOTHING about funds for mass transit.

The Obama camp and LOCAL DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS, INCLUDING ON DU,
are NOT SERIOUS about Mass transit. Kerry was serious about transit.

Local Dems are opposed to investment in rapid transit at every turn.

Voters and liberal politicians passed laws eliminating existing plans
on the books in Seattle, DC, LA, etc. Some of the laws made it illegal
to build any significantly high-grade mass transit beyond streetcars.
Because they would insufficiently benefit the property values of existing
close-in neighborhoods where wealthy so-called liberals live and drive.

here in the DC area, rapid transit is actuactually a REPUBLICAN
issue. Republicans support expanding Metro, mostly because they
own property in the white flight suburbs and recognize that Metro
is desirable. Dems and "so-called liberal" urban planners (whose
goal is to drive up property values in existing walkable neighborhoods
as far as possible) view Metro as a strained, fixed resource to be
worked around, oppose Metro expansion and support trolleys instead
and street widening, and massive investment in garages to house
all those clean cars at 75-99% market share single occupancy
vehicles in "transit accessible" areas. Which they promote by
privatizing carpool lanes as SOV "clean car" toll lanes. The
neoliberal model.

Clean Cars DO NOT WORK. Empirical evidence shows this.

The CAFE standards caused the collapse of the station wagon
and the manufactured consumer demand for heavily promoted SUVs,
backed by an organized nationwide sales pitch tied to restricting
production and eliminating demand for CAFE-affected station wagons.

During the same period, fuel efficiency of American cars DOUBLED.

But VMT ALSO DOUBLED.

Induced demand.

Americans now drive twice as far on the same tank of gas. Econ 101.

And they call it normal, and essential to their daily
routine. And that includes liberal urbanites living in walkable neighborhoods
that they never bother to walk through.They don't know any better.

The more Dems in Seattle, DC, LA, suburban NJ, and the Obama campaign
insist on defunding or illegalizing rapid rail mass transit, and spending
the "Iraq dividend" on "Clean cars" and new roads instead, the more Americans
will renew their old driving habits, and set a bad example for the rapidly
demolishing 600 year old Chinese cities that are now completely impassable on foot.

[Occam Bandage]

4. Recognizing a current policy is not the same as embracing a policy.

When you take a single sentence out of context, you can read whatever you like into it. When you juxtapose it with another sentence out of context, you can show whatever you like. Seriously, this "let's define Obama with two single-sentence quotes" game is getting old. Everyone plays it:

Look, Obama is a fascist!
Look, Obama is an imperialist!
Look, Obama is a socialist!
Look, Obama is a pacifist!
Look, Obama is a theocrat!
Look, Obama is an anti-religious bigot!
Look, Obama is an elitist!
Look, Obama is an enviro-whacko liberal!
Look, Obama is a big-business conservative!
Look, Obama is an effete pansy!
Look, Obama is a bare-knuckle politics-as-usual thug!
Look, Obama is a leather-clad dominatrix!
Look, Obama is a guitar repairman!
Look, Obama is a brand of floor wax!

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. They call it an "imperative". Obama (&Clinton,Mccain) say we must have permanent troop presence

To protect what Obama and Clinton and Brzezinski all specifically described as US economic interests in the region.

"We recognize the imperative" is not a situational term
describing Bush's current policy. It's an absolute term.

Obama (and Clinton, and McCain) also all expressed their specific commitment to fighting and winning any war that Bush actually starts in Iran, despite their personal feelings about starting one. Just as Bill Clinton did in Somalia.

I am just preparing you for realities here.

What the Obama campaign is doing disturbs me. Their close supporters on DU are trying to rally the Democratic base to abandon its core values in service of winning an election that Obama already has in the bag. The big money is trying to clean up the "mess" of an organized left by Howard Dean in order to make an Obama presidency entirely serviceable and structured around elite interests. McCain is merely insurance for them, a fall guy.

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Comments?

I guess this should be moved to GD.

All the liberals seem to have been driven out of this forum
by the Clinton and Obama camps that competed to drag their
candidates further and further to the right to prove their
toughness and fill the void left by the collapse of the Republican party.

It's the Grover Cleveland - Woodrow Wilson wing of the
Democratic Party that is running things now.

[Occam Bandage]

6. "Liberal" does not necessarily mean "pacifist to the point of paranoia."

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. Is it "pacifist" to assert the war in Iraq is immoral and using troops to protect oil cos is insane?

It is you who say that.

[Barack_America]

7. Um, he's right. You can't turn off oil-dependence like a tap.

Disruption in the oil supply would cause international economic chaos.

That's just fact.

The only way to get around this is to ween ourselves off of oil. And that takes time.

I don't see anything scandalous in these comments, just an understanding of reality.

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. So you have no problem waging war for oil, but you are unwilling to live like a Chinese or European

(i.e. drive much, much less, like your grandparents did)
"At the drop of a hat".

Even if it saves lives.

How patriotic.

And before springing the food argument, know this:
Half of all gas goes to support your driving habits.
There is no shortage of oil needed to feed people,
US driving habits and their irrational inistence
that the current highway economy can be somehow
electrified using food supplies or food-equivalent
gas supplies are causing the shortage in oil needed
to produce food and metal. (Plastic is recyclable).

[Barack_America]

11. No. I'm in favor of overhauling our energy policy....

So that such wars are no longer necessary.

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. Such wars are immoral and never necessary.

Fruit and rubber is essential to US standard of living too.

Do you support going to war to protect US banana plantations, or rubber plantations?

[Barack_America]

13. We're not talking about standard of living, we're talking about fuel.

I don't recall the world markets fluctuating wildly based on the price of strawberries.

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. You don't recall the 1920s Central American invasions then. Same argument then, same now.

[Leopolds Ghost]

14. You know, gas will continue to decline relative to US demand no matter how much US demand decreases.

1. US fuel-efficiency has increased 50% since 1980.

2. US VMT has doubled since 1980.

3. US VMT per capita has increased 50% exactly trailing fuel efficiency.

4. Fuel efficiency is mathematically measured in fuel consumed per vehicle mile (VMT).

5. Fuel consumption therefore perfectly tracks cost and availability regardless of the efficiency of your vehicle.

TRANSLATION: you will continue to drive more as your enviro-car's mileage improves.
You will continue to assert that fuel is necessary for personal transportation
until such time as electric cars exist, when alternatives are available right now.
You and other Dems will continue to attack school boards at hearings for asking
kids to walk to school or take the train to school (where trains exist: Dems in
your city will continue to oppose any effort by "crackpots" to build mass transit
in areas "where it doesn't make sense." Such as anywhere near the suburb in which
your fellow Dems live.)

6. Environmentally conscious hybrid SUV drivers who constantly insist on DU that they
need an SUV to avoid being a bad parent driving fuel-efficient hybrid SUVs therefore
drive more according to the cost of the fuel, or cheap alternative to fuel, such as
electric.

7. There is not enough electricity from ANY COMBINATION of sources (including nuclear)
to power US fuel energy demand. Fuel energy demand exceeds the total supply of
electricity in the US from all sources by a factor of two, I believe. Fuel energy
demand equivalent (electric, not including conversion inefficiencies) exceeds the
solar resource capacity available per square foot in the continental US. That means
no amount of "alternative" energy sources will ever power your car. That means you
will continue to justify invading other countries to protect their Oil for US investors
(read -- military-related apparatchicks working for the NeoCon permanent government,
just like in Russia) from now until Judgement Day because alternatives will never
suffice. So you and everyone can either consider changing our lifestyles, or
justifying the death of another Iraqi child to ensure oil supplies are not disrupted
in a war you claim should never have been waged, and yet you are happy to continue
to wage it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. 8. Continued terminal decline in oil resources will therefore justify troops you say we need.

8. Continued terminal decline in available oil resources (which my oil engineer relatives
are quite familiar with) will therefore logically justify any war in the Middle East
under the logic of the current people with whom Obama is surrounding himself with,
including here on DU, neoliberals who believe that war is justifiable
to protect US ownership of fuel in the Middle East in the name of "terrorism" because
fuel will continue to be the ONLY THING propping up a world economy founded on US
overconsumption and debt. Fuel will continue to be necessary to stave off depression
and therefore, by your own logic, US occupation of the Middle East and war will
be inevitable. Because you guys are not willing to back down and lose something
in order to gain something else (like a life). Americans NEVER want to lose.
They are too used to winning.

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. Did only two DUers notice this?

Or is this now SOP for Democratic campaign rhetoric?

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. So, has Obama committed to no permanent bases and get our troops out of Iraq?

Or is this a signal that the entire Democratic foreign policy apparatus
is united behind the goal of protecting Iraq's assets as a client state,
much like our incursions into former Soviet Republics post-911
in an effort to surround Russia?

[KansDem]

19. This might be a stupid question but why don't we just *buy* Iraq's oil?

I mean, we've spent $3 trillion on the Iraq invasion with disastrous results. If we simply wanted access to its oil, why not just buy it? After all, we buy oil from the Saudis and other foreign sources...