Nothing to do with oil?

By Benjamin Humphries

Nothing to do with oil?

I read something last week that frightened me. The words themselves did not frighten me so much as the thought that someone might read them and believe them.

Mr. Kevin E. Comstock wrote a letter to the editor to complain about Eric Groves’ most recent rant. Now, I love complaints. They are often more entertaining to read than the original piece, but Kevin, if you’re going to complain about a writer’s opinion, please think out your argument and make it impenetrable. Try not to make broad statements with more credibility gaps than a Floridian ballot count.

In this letter, it was stated that “Mr. Groves has further confused the issue of eliminating weapons of mass destruction with oil.” This idea was supported by the obviously well researched, documented fact that “none of this has anything to do with oil.”

We live in an oil-driven economy. Next time you buy a fresh banana or pineapple, try to imagine what it would cost if that fruit had to be transported across the ocean by steamship, then by train, in order to be in your grocery store. We use oil for heat, electricity, and transportation. If we woke up tomorrow and oil cost twice as much as it does today, what would happen to our economy?

Thirty percent of the world’s oil supply comes from the Middle East. Only ten percent comes from the United States. The U.S. alone consumes thirty percent of all oil produced each year, while the entire Middle East consumes almost six percent. We have only 40 years left of proven oil reserves at our current rate of consumption. Factor in our annual increase in oil consumption, and we have about 20 years. Here’s the kicker: sixty-five percent of the world’s proven oil reserves are in the Middle East.

The United States has a history of helping rulers of other countries if it benefits us. When we manipulate another country’s ruler to our favor, we call them puppet rulers. Saddam was once our puppet. The U.S. government under the Reagan administration sold chemical weapons, including anthrax, to Iraq in order to keep Iran under control. Why? There’s lots of oil in Iran. If we helped Iraq put their neighbor under dictatorship, thereby giving Iraq control over a major percentage of the world’s oil reserves, then I’m sure we must have gotten something out of the deal.

It’s ludicrous to assume that just because we’re in a so-called “war on terrorism,” and Saddam is a terrorist, the situation has nothing to do with oil. During the Gulf War, when we actually fought Iraq to get them out of Kuwait, they knew better than many U.S. citizens do now what our reasoning for meddling in Middle Eastern politics was. How did they react when they knew they had lost? They set fire to the oil fields.

Open your eyes, people! This country has the worst case of tunnel vision. Our leaders want us all to be like the child who looks at the world through a paper towel roll, thinking it’s a telescope. We’re fed little bits of information about the latest crisis, and instead of linking it with something we’ve already seen before, we just forget about the last thing that bothered us to react to the latest news.

What happened to Bin Laden? Wasn’t he our primary concern last year? We went in and bombed plenty of villages full of innocent men, women, and children, but did we ever get Bin Laden? Who knows? Dubya is changing the subject on us now. It’s as if the country asked him, “OK, where’s Bin Laden?” and he replied with, “LOOK! Over there! It’s Saddam!”

It’s our duty and challenge as the future of this country to question our government, to question each other. We can’t just consume prepackaged news stories and crises of the week. We need to learn for ourselves why things happen and how to avoid them later.

“Those who do not recall history are doomed to relive it.”