[Peace-discuss] Liberal organization promotes AfPak killing

[Stuart Levy]

On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 09:28:14PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [Hayden ignores the long-standing US policy that dictates control of AfPak 
> and instead speaks of a "quagmire," which since Vietnam has meant a 
> situation that the US gets into accidentally and then can't get out of. 
> That wasn't Vietnam, nor is it AfPak. The geopolitical goal of the USG -- 
> control of Mideast energy resources -- is clear; they just don't want to 
> talk about it, because they know that, if they do, the US populace will 
> oppose it -- especially when they learn that we get very little oil from 
> the Mideast. --CGE]

It could seem like a nit, but we should remember that -- if somehow
we could no longer get so much Western Hemisphere (Canada/Mexico/Venezuela)
oil -- we would switch over to importing Middle Eastern oil.  (I gather this'd
be disruptive for a while for the refineries, but wouldn't be a major national
sort of roadblock.)  In other words, we should consider oil as fungible,
and I'd expect that US planners must be doing so too.   The prospect of
"peak oil", for example, is best seen as worldwide not regional.