Disappeared News: Where's the cheap gas if the war was about oil?

Friday, May 30, 2008

Where's the cheap gas if the war was about oil?

by Larry Geller

After listening to Prof. Johan Galtung on Town Square last night (I'll link to the audio when it is available Update: get it here) I found myself asking what American imperialism has done for me lately. I couldn't think of anything.

Gasoline is going through the roof and the world is in a food crisis. Everyone hates us. They hate me. Hawaii's economy might topple. How will we fill the Convention Center if no one can afford to come to Hawaii?

Our conquest of the world hasn't paid off yet it seems. Maybe we should give up fighting and join 'em instead. Be part of the world again, I mean.

From the end of today's Democracy Now interview with Robert Scheer, author of “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.” (tune in via the web video or on Oahu at 10 p.m. channel 56):

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you talk about the humbling of Pax Americana and “empire vs. republic—you decide.” Do you think the people of this country decide?
ROBERT SCHEER: I think the people—in the end—you know, if we have an end—the time to come to the end, the people come to the right conclusion. The problem is, if we stumble into wars, then we can’t get out. They go on for twenty years. Millions of people get killed, and there’s great tragedy. But basically, common sense will dictate in the end, and I think people in this country recognize now—as I say, you just have to go get gas to fill up your car, and you realize imperialism doesn’t pay. You know, here in California, I’m paying, what, $4.40 for gas, and we have seized the second-biggest pool of oil in the world? And we’re now paying—you know, the price of oil has gone up six-fold since George Bush has been president, and you want to tell me imperialism pays? So I think the failure of the neoconservatives really is the failure of the imperial model. The Germans learned that. The French learned it, the English. Everybody in the world knows old-fashioned imperialism does not pay for the average person. It pays for Halliburton. It pays for, you know, Exxon. But it doesn’t pay for the taxpayer.