It Always Comes Back to Oil...

FYI, that’s a picture of the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia, the largest in the world.

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In so many ways, our attack on Iran is not just about taking out “bad actors” (the Ayatollah and the IRGC ARE bad actors) without knowing what will follow, or anti-Muslim pseudo-Christian white supremacy, or whatever rationale Trump and his minions have not been able to articulate (likely because there isn’t a coherent one).

So let me postulate a theory on what it is likely at least partly about: it all comes back around to energy, and therefore, oil.

To start, let’s remember that one of the two people “negotiating” with Iran was Jared Kushner, who received $2 billion from Iran’s regional arch enemy Saudi Arabia - even though their own financial advisers recommended against it. 

As I write this, this is happening (apologies, I don’t have a subscription to Bloomberg but the headline tells you all you need to know):

This graph might help:

But Thomas Massie (of all people) gets to the crux of all of this (via the Tennessee Holler since I don’t go to or link to that other place):

We share absolutely zero cultural and societal values with the Saudis, UAE, and other Middle Eastern countries we’ve chummied up to over the years. As Massie points out, the national security costs of protecting “oil” worldwide are a massive hidden cost (and transfer of wealth to countries that are our adversaries) that is a HUGE drain on our economy and also a HUGE factor in warping our priorities. One of Bin Laden’s goals was to bankrupt our country (links: Al-Qaida is bleeding US to bankruptcy, Bin Laden claims | World news | The Guardian, and Osama bin Laden didn’t win, but he was ‘enormously successful’ - The Washington Post). Not only has he - posthumously - been more than partially successful economically, he’s also been more wildly successful than I believe even he imagined at transforming our society into a security state, with the ultimate result being what we are seeing on the streets of our cities and communities today in the form of DHS and ICE.

I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops since I first became involved in politics.

What we do share with Middle Eastern countries is one thing: oil. We need it and they have it. Not only do they have it, they wield it as a weapon when they want to. “Energy independence” is an oxymoron as it pertains to oil because oil is a global commodity, and no matter how much we pump here in the U.S., we are subject to - and vulnerable to - other providers (read: OPEC+, Russia, etc.) manipulating prices to suit their needs, not ours. Also, let’s remember that the United States doesn’t pump oil - corporations like ExxonMobil do. Their allegiance is not to the U.S. as a country or to consumers within the U.S. - it’s to their profit margins and shareholders, who tend to care more about returns on investment than the price at the pump our national security. In essence, the U.S. taxpayer has been subsidizing the profits of these companies by spending trillions over the years on our military - projecting power worldwide and providing cover - so oil corporations can safely go about their business without absorbing those necessary costs.

This was on my campaign website for a race that took place many years ago:

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What’s the answer?

Hmmmm. If only there were energy sources that don’t cost billions of dollars to defend, are economically competitive, less easily monopolized and widely available, less capital intensive, less susceptible to price manipulation by unscrupulous economic actors and/or unfriendly state actors, less polluting and actually job creating herein the U.S. instead of in foreign countries far away.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get something like that from the sun, or the air in our atmosphere, or the oceans? Wouldn’t it be cool if that energy source and technology was available on a small scale to ranchers and farmers and even individual homeowners?

Oh, wait…

I get it. Powerful financial interests have controlled our historical energy sources (oil, coal, natural gas). They’ve also been able to co-opt our politicians and elected officials using their financial clout.

There needs to be a reckoning.

Much like how the actions of the unassuming people of Minnesota have led to an unexpected change in public opinion regarding ICE and immigration, we need to step up to do the same regarding fossil fuel-based energy sources and the powerful interests that result in illegal “wars of choice” against countries that are thousands of miles away and that pose no “imminent threat”.

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PS - Trump is basically imploring the IRGC to just put in with the street protestors and give up the ideology they’ve followed over the past 40+years. Yeah, that’ll work:

And then there’s this mind boggling post: