Media everywhere have been trying to ferret out the meaning of the May 1 Navy SEALS raid that killed Osama bin Laden, with praise for President Obama and/or Bush, criticism of one or both, and a fair amount of speculation of what al-Qaeda might do next.
What none of the coverage I've seen (at least in our area) even touches is the fact that Osama's death solves none of the real problems that prompted him to start hating the West in the first place. Remember, after all, that he was once OUR guy in Afghanistan vs the Soviets, and he was then fighting a war that, in his mind, never changed -- a war to drive foreigners out of Muslim soil. Once the Soviets departed in 1989, he largely vanished for a while, until the first Iraq War, when we used his homeland, Saudi Arabia, as a staging ground, defeated the Iraqis, and set up semi-permanent shop in Saudi.
We aren't in Saudi in significant military numbers at the moment, but are still in Iraq, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere -- and all of them for two interrelated reasons: money and power. In this case, both of them manifest mostly as oil. Yes, I know Afghanistan lacks the black stuff itself, but we're there due to our junkie's relationship with the repressive regime in Riyadh which provides significant doses of our drug of choice.*
If we had broken or seriously reduced our dependence on crude oil starting back in the 1970s, we would not have felt the need to defend the Saudis in 1991, and therefore not have given bin Laden a new target to point his twisted obsessions at. We wouldn't, therefore, be involved in three wars in the Mid East now, and would be free to do what our conscience says we should: support real change in those countries. Likewise, we would be able to truly help the people of Pakistan address the serious crisis mainstream US media doesn't discuss -- they're reeling from last year's massive floods and have disintegrating food and fuel systems that threaten the stability of South Asia.
To be clear, OUR addiction did not justify the Twin Tower attack or al-Qaeda's subsequent activities and ranting, but we could have PREVENTED some or all of it by having some foresight.
We are the wealthiest culture that has EVER existed, but a large part of it is unnecessarily wasteful and redundant: multiple cars and TVs per household, dozens electrical devices left running constantly, giant office buildings that are empty (but sucking energy) about half of every day, the ad-driven demand for the latest fad, failure to build a good transit network, overpackaged everything, etc. Almost all of that waste has been produced by and perpetuates an economic system that is obsessed with the sociopathic notion that we should be in constant competition, when humanity has survived this long primarily because we learned how to share and cooperate. Selfish, greedy people in the Ayn Rand model might have the upper hand over the short-term (they certainly seem to run the global economy now), but that selfishness is rapidly undermining both our culture's capacity to provide for our needs and Earth's capacity to support us.
It's obvious we cannot rewrite history, but it's equally obvious we can't keep enacting the insane script that claims it's "destiny" for us to do whatever we please in the world. That script is one that leads toward more war and our self-destruction as a society -- probably even as a species. There are in fact limits to growth of our economy, our population and our overall impact on the planet. Other cultures and other species do have a right to exist and are not there to serve us.
We are one of many parts of this amazing, wonderful living system called Earth and have a responsibility to ensure that it continues to be a healthy place for life. That means it's long overdue time we stopped playing juvenile, showoff games of power and prestige and started acting like intelligent adults by doing what we know must be done to solve the problems we face. For the U.S., that means leading by quickly weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and resource wasting practices while diverting what funds we have left to building a strong, localized alternative energy network, rebuilding our communities, and cleaning up the ecosystem. Money and power (in the political and energy sense) are tools, not reasons for existence, and certainly should not be the causes of our suicide.
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* Saudi Arabia is not our top oil source; it's fourth after Canada, Mexico and the U.S. itself. But it has the world's largest remaining supply of the easy-to-reach, fairly inexpensive oil, and therefore has an inordinate amount of influence. Several sources, however, note Riyadh may have been lying for years about how much it actually has, and the evidence indicates it is not capable of meeting growing global demand. At the same time, all of the non-OPEC sources are rapidly in decline and almost every oil producer is showing signs of holding back some of their oil for their own people rather than exporting it. While some countries have claimed new discoveries, they're almost all from deep-ocean sites that are extremely dangerous and expensive to tap. Add all that to rapidly growing demand from China and India, and we've got a huge mess on our hands known as Peak Oil, which global production numbers show actually hit in 2006.
(It's after midnight and I'm mental toast, so I'll come back later to add the links that support all of these things.)
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