No More Magic Pony Plans

Here is a fact most people won’t
acknowledge.

Iraq is irrelevant. Frankly,
Afghanistan is irrelevant. Osama bin Laden was relevant, but since we
allowed Al Qaeda to metastacize, and we are told it’s no longer under
his control, he’s now only symbolically relevant.

Democrats, subject to the Vietnam
Syndrome (afraid to sound “dovish”) will not admit this fact.
Republicans, in whose name the War Crimes of Iraq were committed,
under whom the Cradle of Civilization has been reduced to ashes, are
completely unwilling to face reality.

Here is the truth. Oil is the enemy.

It’s the replacement of petroleum, first with biofuels, then with
hydrogen, that must be our top priority. Oil is destroying the
planet’s ecosystem and scientists say we are very close now to a
“tipping point” where the damage from global warming, the mass
extinction of nearly everything, becomes inevitable.

What’s the worst thing that can happen if we abandon Iraq?
The price of oil goes up, maybe way up.

Good.

We need a high floor price for energy
to encourage the technology of conservation, and to assure a market
for alternative fuels. Whatever the price, it will be a price.

If we
can set a government-mandated floor near that price, then we have the
incentive our inventors need to get inventing. So long as the price
of energy is subject to free fall, no one will make the long-term
investments needed to deal with our real problem, which is to replace
petroleum with something sustainable, with unlimited hydrogen from
wind, water, the Sun and the heat of the Earth itself.

Rather than deal with this reality,
which is as stark and as threatening as a heart attack, we have all
sorts of “magic pony plans” to “win” Iraq or at least, claim
a Vietnam-like draw (losing after we leave). It’s not just a waste of
treasure and of lives, it’s beside the point.

• 
  There’s a magic pony plan to bring
  in more armored vehicles.
• We have the magic pony plan of
  sending in more troops.
   
•  There is the magic pony shopping
  list of go big, go long, or go home.
• There’s the magic
  pony plan of “we can win.”
• There’s the magic
  pony plan of it’s not my fault, from the people who got us into this
  mess.
• The idea of getting halfway out and expecting a solution to appear  is a magic pony plan.
• Instituting a draft,
  as presently offered, is a magic pony plan.
  (Magic pony available here.)

Here is the truth. There
is no magic pony. There is no way to save Iraq, to influence Iraq, to
negotiate over Iraq. This whole thing is FUBAR – Fouled Up Beyond
All Recognition. And the question of Iraq, in and of itself, is the
wrong question.

The question is not, where
do we get the oil? The question is, how can we replace the oil?

Until we start asking the
right question, we can’t hope to find an answer to Iraq or anything
else.