How, Exactly, Are They Defending Our Freedom?

When people object anything relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neocons claim that they should be quiet and comply, because the criticism hurts the feelings of “the troops”, who are busy “defending our freedom” over there.

I do appreciate that the soldiers feel like they’re serving America…but defending our…freedom?

Our freedom? We Americans, here in the United States?

When I’m faced with this argument, it is hard to give a clear, coherent response for or against, because the claim makes no sense to me, whatsoever.

This is an honest question, not sarcasm:

What, exactly, does the conquest of Iraq have to do with American freedom?

Did we conquer Iraq for American freedom?

• First, we built up momentum to attack because Hussein was supposedly involved in 9-11.

But then it became more widely understood that Hussein was one of Al Qaeda’s mortal enemies. In fact, one of the things bin Laden demanded was that Hussein, whom he referred to as a socialist infidel, be removed from power. So…

• Second, when we actually attacked, it was supposedly because of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We knew Iraq once had WMD, because we openly sold Hussein the technology for them, in the 1980s, and claimed we thought they still had somehow kept some, despite the years of inspections.

But it turned out, after we got there, that we had known he didn’t have the WMD any more at all, so…

• Third, we retroactively decided we were there to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He is a dictator, killed hundreds of thousands of people, imposed tyrannical laws, et cetera.

Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with close American ally Saddam Hussein, in the 1980s, shortly after the US acknowledged Hussein had been using WMD against civilians.

Of course we supported him doing ALL of those things, including the mass murder, for decades, we even sold him WMD tech months after acknowledging that he was slaughtering innocents with it, but let’s just pretend that’s why we invaded, anyway. It sounds good.

The problem is that NONE of those things have anything to do with American freedom.

The Warfare Facts

• First, 9-11 wasn’t an assault on American freedom. Al Qaeda was attacking in order to change our foreign policy (giving money to Islamic tyrants, occupying Saudi Arabia, killing a million people in Iraq with economic sanctions, backing Israeli war crimes).

…in fact, the only 9-11 related assault on freedom was domestic, like the PATRIOT Act.

• Second, American freedom wasn’t going to be threatened by Hussein having mustard gas, or anthrax, or even nuclear bombs. Nobody ever seriously suggested he could conquer the US with his mighty navy of 16 wooden patrol boats and his deadly force of a few dozen short-range SCUD missiles, no matter how many WMD he loaded on them.

Liberty depends on economic freedom…whomever controls your life needs, controls you. This war has crippled the US economically, which had turned into an assault on our freedom of choice. By the way, why exactly did we sell him WMD technology in the first place?

• Third, that’s barely even a fight for Iraqi freedom, since they’re voting as much against freedom now as anyone who knew about the region would have expected. The laws passed are on their way to becoming more repressive than under Hussein’s secular government. These include a move to make burqas mandatory, and growing bans on freedom of expression. Certainly overthrowing Hussein has nothing to do with freedom here in America.

Actual Assault on American Freedom

Because we’ve been “on war footing” for six years, BOTH parties have used the “don’t criticize the government during a war” argument, dramatically attacking American freedom of expression. We have had “free speech zones“, warrantless wire tapping, demands that we not criticize foreign policy lest the troops feel bad, secrecy regarding torture and other violations of American principles, et cetera.

Oil Prices, Real and Adjusted, from 1990 to mid 2008

We have had economic malaise caused by both the huge deficits and diversion of wealth-production the war produced, and the 700% increase in the price of oil that attacking or threatening four different oil-producing nations caused. And this resulted in a depression that Bush and Obama have used to expand government massively into our personal lives, and to loot our future to pay off failing multinational corporations, perhaps the most vicious of the attacks on our freedom.

You know, there may be a country closer to home than Iraq, where our troops should be fighting a government that is attacking American freedom…

Anyway, I definitely need someone to explain what is the “defending AMERICAN freedom” part of invading, conquering, and occupying Iraq.

Words of the Sentient:

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

– Oscar Wilde, A Portrait of Mr. W.H.

Secrecy is Tyranny

(caption: Keeping secrets from voters is exactly as coercive as holding a gun to their head in the voting booth)

Secrecy, even in and of itself, is a form of tyranny.

No, this doesn’t mean when you don’t tell your friend about his surprise party, nor concealing the recipe for Coke Classic, not even the hidden initiation rites for that fraternity…

But when you cause someone to do something they would have otherwise not chosen, because you conceal information from them, then you are coercing them, the same as if you pointed a gun at their head. 

And, in the case of government, when the People are supposed to control policy through elections and popular support, any government-concealed information that changes how they would vote is tyranny, same as if they sent stormtroopers to help fill out ballots on election day.

Any pundit you see complaining that a government official told the American public too much is, in effect, advocating tyranny.

It’s one thing to hide when troops are making an attack for a few days, or to openly refuse to tell exactly how a nuclear bomb is made…but it’s another, entirely, to conceal information that will change how people vote, no matter what “national security” excuse they invent.

This is most painfully transparent when the actual “national security” excuse is “this will embarrass [some government official or office]“. Embarrassment, shame, and general changing of how someone sees something are obviously not legitimate excuses. What’s more, it would not matter either way, because that is the price of liberty.

America is supposed to be a free country. This requires responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, including when it means something embarrassing, whether to your neighbor or the foreigners who will be horrified or disgusted at our government’s behavior.

In fact, without secrecy, many of those evils would not occur in the first place, just as in our real lives. If the government can’t hide when it bribes a foreign official, or tortures someone, or other evils, then it will face public and international shame, and the threat of voter retaliation, and hopefully not do it in the first place.

By preventing voter retaliation, a government does not make itself more stable…just more tyrannical.

Unamerican Policies Are Great Tiger Repellent

We didn't get attacked for the ten years prior to 9-11 either.

 
Little Old Lady: [Long Island Accent] This tiger repellent is so expensive, I may have to cut back on my groceries to keep getting it! 

Sane Person: But…tiger repellent is a scam! Why would you buy such a thing? It’s a waste of money! 

Little Old Lady: Well, I started buying it when that magician got mauled. And obviously it works; I haven’t been attacked by a tiger, since!

No matter whether Bush’s policies violated every American principle or not, one thing you can definitely say is that we haven’t had a terrorist attack on US soil in the seven years since he started them.

Nor have we been attacked by tigers.

In fact, we did not have a terrorist attack on US soil for almost ten years BEFORE 9-11. Crediting Bush’s violation of every American and Conservative principle with this “safety” is actually somewhat more foolish than the little old lady buying tiger repellent.

Unless it actually attracts tigers.

Because Bush’s evils, committed in our name, like:

• Torturing now-helpless captives
• Attacking countries without provocation
• Rounding up people at random from suspected areas and keeping them for months, or years, without outside contact or even determining which ones, if any, are actually the targets
• Handing out billions in cash and military supplies to top state sponsors of terrorism like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

All have increased likelihood of attacks against America.

It is no coincidence that terrorist attacks worldwide increased with each implementation of these policies. That they didn’t happen in the US is because zero times some amount is still zero.

These evils are a perfect recruitment system for terrorism. What other way do these people have to stop us? Would YOU not fight back, if these things were being done to your family?

Evils we would not normally commit, we should not commit just to gain some benefit…but especially when the benefit is imaginary. “We haven’t been attacked since 9-11″ is as ridiculous as “I haven’t been attacked by a tiger since Siegfried and Roy were attacked”.

Beware the Coming [insert non-threat] Pandemic!!!

As you know, we’re all preparing for the devastating Swine Flu epidemic, which has reached our shores and infected eighty-something people.

It is destined to be the latest pandemic, taking its place alongside the millions of deaths America suffered during the BIRD Flu epidemic, West Nile epidemic, SARS epidemic, Mad Cow Disease…the list goes on, all of them heirs to the mass death of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.

And they all have this subtle trait in common:

They turned out to be sheer nonsense.

Nobody in the US has been killed by Bird Flu. Only already-sickly people in third-world countries like China, where a common cold can kill you, too.

A few Americans have actually died from West Nile, but only 1/10th the number who died from swimming pools, far less than 1/100th of the number who died from the common hospital infection, staph, in the same period.

Even in third world countries, SARS has a mortality rate of less than 10%. In the US, its mortality rate is ZERO.

And the same is true of Swine Flu. At the time of this writing, 80+ Americans have gotten it, and NONE have died. The normal flu is more dangerous.

And, of course, they can’t prove anyone’s ever really even GOTTEN mad cow, much less died from it.

For decades, people have been claiming to recognize what the next big 1918 Flu Pandemic heir will be.

But they always have to refer back to 1918, because 91 years ago is the last time it happened.

Why?

Because medical technology is so advanced that it’s not likely to EVER happen again.

In 1918, most of the ideas and techniques now ingrained in medicine were in their infancy. It was, really, the last good opportunity for a big pandemic to happen. Now, it’s too late.

So why do we keep hearing that the Next Big Epidemic is coming?

The same reason we keep hearing that we’re in imminent danger from asteroids and global warming:

Fear Equals Funding.

Because of budget-padding witch doctors at places like the CDC and NIH.

See, those guys have EXACTLY the same motivations as a tobacco scientist; Money.

Except that they have an even worse dependency upon money than a tobacco scientist. They have a budget that depends almost purely on fear.

DC bureaucrats actually use the phrase Fear Equals Funding, when discussing why they make things they know to be unlikely or harmless sound like doomsday.

Do a quick search for “CDC budget request” or “NIH budget request” on Google. You get results like this fearmongering from the Director of NIH, asking for more money for the next budget:

New threats and diseases constantly emerge. For example, soldiers suffering from blast injury highlight the importance of additional knowledge on traumatic brain injuries. Infectious diseases remain among the leading causes of death worldwide. More than 30 newly recognized infectious diseases and syndromes emerged in the last three decades alone, including HIV/AIDS and SARS. Infectious diseases that once seemed to be fading, such as tuberculosis and malaria, have resurged. New drug-resistant forms of once-easily treated microbial infections are emerging at a rapid pace. New strains of influenza occur each year. There is concern that a new influenza virus may emerge with the capacity for sustained human-to-human transmission, possibly triggering a pandemic similar to what occurred in 1918, 1957, and 1968.

Doom and gloom fearmongering. He is STILL robbing the taxpayer with the SARS bogeyman, years after Southpark mocked its irrelevantly low mortality rate: 

Stanley, listen to me. I have SARS. There’s only a ninety-eight percent chance that I will live.

Likewise, you can find the CDC terrorizing the public with threats of “avian flu”, even though it’s caused ZERO deaths:

“Concerns that avian influenza (H5N1) could become the next influenza pandemic”

They also emit girlish shrieks about SARS and West Nile, in the same budget request.

The Swine Flu panic is not about saving people from imminent death, but about greed.

NIH/CDC official = Tobacco Scientist

The “Global War On Terror” is a Lie

 

The neocon philosophy of cowardice demands that we surrender our essential freedoms, in return for the promise of temporary safety

The neocons are parroting Conservative words, loud and shrill, these days. Suddenly they’re against the very same socialism and police state that they defended when Bush was doing it. 

But you can be reminded that they’re neocon frauds, when they start fearmongering “terrorism”, which they seem unable to stop doing.

Recently, it’s been this insane pretense that the Somali pirates are terrorists.

Of course, you and I and every other rational person know:

Terrorists commit random acts of destruction/killing, to create an environment of fear, in order to work toward some political goal.

Pirates attack vessels in order to obtain wealth, either by looting or ransom. In a way, they are the opposite of terrorists.

The Somali ship-stealing guys are doing nothing but attacking vessels for loot/ransom. They are pirates, not terrorists.

Really, given the two definitions above, it takes a fool incompetent in the subject to confuse them.

Great way to identify some of the neocon fakes in talk shows and punditry.

But it doesn’t stop with the pirates.

They still pretend the resistance fighters in Iraq are terrorists.

Resistance fighters attack a foreign occupation force, in order to drive it from their country.

That’s what is happening in Iraq. 

But the charade isn’t just one of pretending anything they don’t like is terrorism. The neocons also have double standards about whether terrorism is bad.

They support, for example, the training and funding of terrorists, as long as their mass murder is useful to us.  

• When we trained and supplied Al Qaeda in the 1980s in Afghanistan, it was at their behest.
• When we supported Saudi Arabia’s building of Wahabi hate schools all around Asia in the 80s and 90s, the neocons were the reason.
• When we backed, and funded, the Pakistani fundamentalist Islamic dictatorship’s overthrow of the Afghani government by the Taliban, it was to the joy of the neocons.

Of course this hypocrisy extends beyond terrorism…the neocons fought to keep us openly supplying Weapons of Mass Destruction technology to Saddam Hussein in the 80s. But we’re dealing with their fake Terror War here, not their general sociopathic nature.

So, getting back to the topic, the neocons have undermined democracy in the middle east, refusing to deal with the elected government of Palestine, claiming they won’t support former “terrorists” in government…and yet backing, no matter what war crimes they commit, the former terrorists who run the Israeli government.

Blowing up buildings full of innocents in a land where you were not even born, as the future rulers of Israel did in the 1940s, is OK, but blowing up soldiers occupying your homeland and keeping you in concentration-camp conditions today is “terrorism”

Actually, it’s not. They’re resistance fighters, of course. Whether the Jewish people who moved to Palestine in the 1940s and started killing people there count as resistance fighters (you’re supposed to be locals fighting foreigners) is debatable. But there’s no question the Palestinian fighters are resisting foreign occupation.

Side Note: Precedent

We were all disgusted when the mass-murdering Russian government started calling resistance fighters “terrorists”, to parrot Bush. The problem is that Bush set that precedent, by abusing the word just as laughably.

Precedent is one of the practical reasons to not blindly defend “your guy” when he’s doing something wrong. Bush built many of his abuses on Clinton’s precedents. Clinton coined the phrase “war on terror”, and attacked both Iraq and Afghanistan in order to distract from domestic problems, while claiming to fight terrorists…a perfect lead-in for Bush. Likewise, Obama’s current socialist agenda, nationalizing banks, spending trillions on fake “stimulus”, is identical to what Bush was doing before he left office.

But, getting back to terrorism, precedent is its most ugly with the case of Obama using the police state Bush created, for his own domestic agenda. Verbally supporting liberty is literally being described in official government  documents as terrorist, by the new, unconstitutional, and definitively police state Department of Homeland Security.

On the other hand, he has stopped referring to our inconsistent, hypocritical foreign policy as a “war on terror”, to the horror of the neocons, who are essentially saying this amounts to treason.

There is no actual Global War on Terror. Just a bunch of dishonest men advocating evils that they appear to believe will benefit themselves, while using fear to get you to submit to it. THAT is preying upon terror, as much as anything.

So You Thought Oil Prices Were NOT Driven Up by War?

Resistance fighters in Gaza, struggling against the internationally condemned occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government, have been shooting shoulder-fired missiles at Israel for years, now. They have even killed a handful of people, in their largely-fruitless effort.

Faced with an election, and the need for an October Surprise, the Israeli government decided to “retaliate” against this long-standing effort, by slaughtering a few thousand semi-random Palestinians, by attacking ANYONE who lived in the areas from whence the missiles supposedly were being fired.

The effect on the US, other than dirtying its hands by unconditionally defending the Israeli government’s war crimes?

Oil prices, that were steadily declining for months, as I noted and explained here, suddenly reversed themselves, and have climbed since the butchery started.

The only glimmer of hope for the US economy, keeping hope of not being entirely trapped in another economic depression, was the dramatic drop in the oil prices that helped create the depression in the first place.

Anyone who thinks the previous, 700% inflation of oil prices were from a weak dollar, or oil shortages, or growth in demand, et cetera, take note. As illustrated in this chart, the actual cause of high oil prices was, and is today, foreign policy strife.

We’re backing “retaliation” against the Palestinian neighborhoods that is killing tens, or hundreds, of times more innocents than the Palestinian resistance fighter attacks do, and the sole “benefit” we get is newly crippling oil prices.

Super-Sizing Sour Grapes

What Americans have, even in the midst of an economic depression, is an embarrassment of riches.

When the citizens of other countries complain that Americas eat too much, what they are really saying is “We are jealous of America’s plentiful food”; Despite (or because of) all their redistributive, anti-choice socialist programs, the typical European has less access to food, in diversity or amount, than even the poorest fifth of Americans. Maybe nobody in Europe goes hungry, but they don’t really prosper, either.  (facebook readers beware; the rest of the article is after the picture, don’t ask me why that happens)

A Fox found a bunch of grapes, on a vine over a lofty branch. Turning round with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no success. At last he had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour, anyway." MORAL: It is easy to despise what you cannot get.

And when they say “Americans are too fat”, what they mean is “Americans are more affluent”. Americans don’t need to walk as much, or otherwise engage in as much involuntary physical labor. Even poor Americans have more comfortable homes, more access to cars, more video games and computers, infinitely better television, more leisure, even without the Europeans’ governments forcing them to suffer the pay cut imposed by a mandatory six week vacation every year. 

Of course their response to this being pointed out is “more leisure? More entertainment? More living space? Bah! What kind of horrible way of measuring quality of life! People must be equal, not happy, you dirty materialist!” And yet, of course, everything about socialism is materialistic, an endless class war of envy and hate, worrying about who has more than whom, redistributing wealth, controlling our choices. That is the reason Marxists called it the Materialist Dialectic.

But it turns out that socialism traps people in stagnancy and perpetual shortages, while freedom allows people to have many more things. So, naturally, the actual materialists had to turn around and claim that prosperity is “decadent”, and “greedy”. How it can be more greedy than wanting to redistribute other people’s money for oneself, I don’t know.

Americans have a tendency to be hard workers. They are, statistically, the most productive society on the planet…but people, in general, who have access to more food and more leisure have to learn how to balance that with the need to choose to maintain physical fitness. Even if Americans, as a society, do learn that, the percentage of individuals who do not will still drag down the “average”.

An embarrassment of riches is a wonderful problem to have. “Oh no, too many people want to date me!” “Oh woe, I’ve grown so many tomatoes, I must give them away!” “Pitty me: now that I’ve won the lottery, people keep asking me for money!”

Who would seriously choose a life of more hunger, less choice, and more involuntary struggle over one where they need to choose to struggle a bit to stay in good physical condition?

In tests, lab animals that go somewhat hungry live longer. This probably is true of people as well…but what benefit is the added life, if it’s a result of being forced to do with less? 

We’re better off being faced with the need to control how much to work out, to watch our diet, et cetera, than being lean because we haven’t the chance to be flappy even if we were irresponsible. To be free to choose whether to life short, fat, comfortable lives, or strive for longer, healthier lives.

Some of us will chose wrong…but that isn’t necessarily limited to the ones who choose leisure. 

For some people, the effort may make life less worthwhile. For others, the working to “stay fit” might actually be more fun, as well as healthier. 

Americans are free to choose, whereas the victims of socialism in the rest of the world have what is supposedly best forced upon them “for your own good”, in a one-size-fits-all solution. People are better off being free to determine their own size.

That’s why even the most enlightened, economically and socially homogeneous European country still has more citizens wishing to become Americans, than Americans (despite our larger population) wishing to move to that country.

The price of choice, is the risk of mistakes. Even life-altering ones. But, overall, the benefit far outweighs the cost.

Americans can be proud to have the freedom that allows us the prosperity to choose whether to supersize their meals. The reason the rest of the world complains, ultimately, is that they are deprived of even the option. They have super-sized Sour Grapes.

Stopping Piracy on the High Seas

Now that a ship of the evil, but highly influential, Saudi tyranny has been hijacked by pirates, suddenly the long-standing problem of piracy in the Indian ocean is headline news. 

Crackpot neocons like Michael Savage, and his imitator Mark Levin, are calling for the US Navy to run around destroying boats and slaughtering people suspected of piracy.

Socialists/Liberals are proposing the normal, faux-pacifist solutions of more international committees and taxpayer funding to bureaucratically consider the problem, and more handouts, and of course trying to force an authoritarian central government on Somalia, sort of a reverse-Iraq, nation-destroying project.

But the real solution is, as usual, not one of more governmental intrusion, but one of more individual liberty and responsibility:

Allow private craft to be armed.

Now, most people probably don’t realize this, but there are complete bans on boats or ships carrying defenses in most nations where you might come to port. These leave craft largely helpless against piracy, even though the ban on defense has no practical benefit.

Imagine how easy it would actually have been for a ship the size of an oil tanker to defend itself, against pirates in a speedboat, armed with rifles and grenades. Especially considering the expenditure that would be justified by the value of its cargo. How good a defense could YOU afford, if you were shipping $100,000,000 worth of oil?

The pirates reportedly captured the supertanker with rifles and grenades, in a speedboat. Imagine if the tanker were legally allowed to defend itself...

Allowing/encouraging craft to defend themselves would have the added benefit of making it safer for any craft to NOT defend itself. Even pacifists, who did not arm their boats, would be protected, because any potential pirates could not know whether the boat is armed, or not. So ALL people would be safer, if only SOME would arm themselves well enough to make piracy too dangerous.

This is, of course, the story of Big Brotherment mentality, where the governments constantly arm themselves better, but tell the individuals that arming yourself is bad…and yet fail to protect the disarmed people WITH the government’s massive weaponry.

Meanwhile, of course, criminals arm themselves BETTER, because of the disarmed masses. What is easy to buy on the black market is whatever desirable thing is most wrongfully banned by a government.

Even a small boat could take out an attacker with a single shot…and yet, of course, pirates would not profit if THEY took out victims with a single shot. You don’t make any money from ransom, nor gain any loot, if you sink your target. 

Therefore, if ships were allowed to defend themselves, there would BE no pirates, because it would be far more risky, with modern weaponry, than profitable.

Problem actually solved. 

If, instead, we have government deal with the problem of piracy…well, when’s the last time government actually solved a problem? Actually fixed the thing they claimed to be fighting, so that the problem was simply gone, and the powers usurped to deal with it were returned to the people?

Has that ever happened?

Let’s go with liberty, letting ships defend themselves, instead of bureaucracy, spending billions to probably make the problem worse.

India, an Evil Empire, Draws Attacks in Mumbai

The terrorists attacking India are as evil in their chosen tactics as were Catholic terrorists in Ireland in 1920,  Jewish terrorists in Palestine in 1948, or American terrorists in Oklahoma city in 1995. 

But, as with those and most other terrorists, what drives the madmen who attacked India is a laundry list of wrongs and evils committed against those terrorists’ people. When there is such horror, and all reasonable ways of getting justice are exhausted, some small part of the victims will always turn to unreasonable ways.

Just as the British Empire committed many evils, earning it strife with Ireland, Palestine, and many others, so India (once fighting that very British Empire with terrorism) is an evil empire today, repressing and oppressing people within its own borders, plus occupying lands it illegitimately occupies, like Kashmir.

There are more Indian troops per capita in Kashmir, than any other occupation force on earth, including Communist China in Tibet, Israel in Palestine, Americans in Baghdad, or Russians in Chechnya

In 1947,  India and Pakistan were being formed from the shambles of the British Empire. Each state of that region was supposed to choose which of the two countries to join.

When Kashmir’s ruler was slow to decide who to join, India attacked Kashmir, invading and occupying their land, robbing the 80% Muslim population from what was an almost inevitable decision to join Pakistan, or else declare independence.

When India persisted in occupying this region, preventing its union with Pakistan, the United Nations declared that it Kashmir should have an election, referred to as a “plebiscite”, in order to determine whether it joined India or Pakistan.

Since Kashmir is 80% Muslim, there was never any doubt which way the election would go…so “democratic” India has not, in the 60 years since, EVER allowed that election, continuing to illegitimately occupy Kashmir.

This was part of India’s very aggressive, violet habit at that time. For example, they  also invaded and forcibly annexed the states of Junagadh and Hyderabad, one of which wanted to become Pakistani, the other wanting independence. India’s excuse was that both were majority Hindu…yet it ignores the fact that Kashmir is overwhelmingly Muslim.

People in Kashmir resist their country’s occupation, as any patriots should be expected to do.

When they do this against India’s troops, not only is it not “terrorism”, but it’s actually legal and legitimate, under international law, international humanitarian law, and Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. All people have a right to fight foreign occupation forces, not only a natural right, but even a legal one.

The repression and violence brought on by the extreme Indian military occupation, killing thousands of Kashmiri, ends up driving them to ever greater desperation. The Pakistani government takes advantage of this distress, funding militant movements because it wants the benefit of Kashmir as a territory, as illustrated by its opposition to Kashmir simply voting for its own independence.

Terrorism, in this situation, is almost inevitable. The war spills over from the Indian troops terrorizing the people of Kashmir, to Kashmiri terrorizing people in India. It’s not right, but it’s a natural result of the Indian government’s evil.

The same happened when Russia occupied Chechnya, the Soviets occupied Afghanistan…when you wrongfully occupy a people’s homeland, bringing them terror and suffering, eventually they bring it back to you.

Why Oil and Gas Prices Are Falling

We all know that high gas/energy prices, driven by high oil prices, are a large part of what has crippled the US economy.

But what has caused that?

Oil prices are not set by oil companies, but by futures and commodities speculators, who bid on the oil at auctions. The companies have no more control over the price than someone selling with a regular auction on EBay.

The speculators decide what they are willing to pay, based on what they believe the future of oil to be.

How Prices Rose

In 1999, the monopolistic oil cartel OPEC started cutting production, specifically to help themselves and their allies get rich by driving up the price of oil. Speculators, naturally, started bidding more for oil, expecting there to be a shortage. It went from well under $20 per barrel to over $30.

Then George W Bush got elected.

People assumed, because wealthy oil barons in Texas and Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for financing him, that plentiful oil was in their future. This ignored history, of course, because plentiful oil is cheap, and cheap oil is bad for oil barons. The more expensive oil is, the better. It would have made more sense to expect Bush to do things that would drive up the price of oil.

Bush holds hands with a member of the Saudi tyranny, top state sponsor of terrorism, and leader of the push to keep oil prices high

But they assumed it’d be plentiful, so they bid lower on it, and the price fell. It got almost back down to its natural, under-$20 price range.

But that was bad for Bush’s financiers.

In fact, there was a lot of loud public worry, among oil barons, about how the price of oil was returning to normal.

Then came September 11th, 2001. 

Afghanistan

After 9-11, there were many ways America could go. 

The way Bush chose to lead, was to first attack Afghanistan. He said this was because they were harboring bin Laden. He promised, though, that he was going to exhaust all diplomatic means, and only attack them as a last resort.

But before he attacked, the government of Afghanistan, a long-time US ally whom Bush had just recently sent, openly and on record, a great deal of grant money for their help, offered to turn over bin Laden for war crimes trial.

Bush ignored the offer, refusing even to discuss it with them. When they offered a second time, the US attacked the very next day.

Speculators saw this as a very bad sign for oil, because Afghanistan was closely aligned with many oil-producing countries, and they bid more for it, driving the price into the high $20 range, fifty percent higher than its natural price.

Iraq

Then Bush began threatening to attack Iraq. Now Afghanistan had at least some association with Al Qaeda…but Iraq, of course, was ruled by Al Qaeda’s #2 enemy after the US: Saddam Hussein.

Oil speculators found this pretty scary, and confusing. The price of oil rose to close to $40, more than twice its natural range.

Gradually, it declined, on the promise of cheap oil from Iraq, even though every government projection of conquering Iraq anticipated years of quagmire and turmoil, jeopardizing oil supplies for a long time to come. This is why his father had not done it.

(more after this K-rad graphic)

 

Oil Prices, Real and Adjusted, from 1990 to mid 2008

Sure enough, as time war on, the war got worse, and the speculators responded by bidding ever-higher for oil.

 

General Belligerence

What’s more, whenever the price was finally stabilizing a bit, the Bush administration would do something else that threatened the oil supply, like picking fights with Hugo Chavez, or threatening to attack Iran. Each time, investors were frightened, and the oil price climbed.

Eventually, this kind of belligerent foreign policy pattern pushed it up to $140 per barrel, over 700% above its natural price of just a few years earlier.

Sane Foreign Policy?

Then, in early 2008, it began to grow increasingly likely that Barak Obama would be the Democratic nominee. Unlike Hillary, he had always opposed this kind of foreign policy. Speculators began to weigh the possibility of a different foreign policy into their price bids.

As Obama's election grew more likely, oil buyers became reassured that oil supplies might be secure, and bid less, driving down prices.

As he clinched the nomination, and then began to dominate the polls versus McCain, the amount speculators were willing to pay steadily declined.

 

By the time he was elected, which had been seen as a probable for some time, they had built a peaceful foreign policy into the price, so that it was half its peak. 

The day after he was elected, the price fell dramatically. 

Now it remains in a holding pattern, a fraction of its peak just a year ago…waiting to see if Barak Obama is going to keep his promise of sane foreign policy. If he does, we could see oil falling down to its natural price, which by now is probably little more than $30 a barrel.

Ironically, sane foreign policy has an even greater impact on what the investors in oil are willing to pay, than Obama’s own position as a Liberal enemy of the energy needs of Americans.