[_k]

Is it really that smart ? By doing so the president commits crimes against humanity, incentives lots of people to attack the US, kills privacy for the sake of security and does so while violating the constitution. The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, the people (not the government !) end up paying for this madness. Literally and figuratively.

A smart thing to do would have been to fund programs that bring alternatives on the market. That may not even have been necessary. (high oil prices is a big enough incentive) If he had invested all that war money in alternatives, the world would love the US. But look at what's happening now ! The guy at the top is worse than Bush. He then bullies and threatens foreign countries in an attempt to shut down journalists. How smart is all that ?

The US could have innovated its way out of oil dependency problem. It choose not to. How smart is that ?

[outworlder]

> Is it really that smart ? By doing so the president commits crimes against humanity, incentives lots of people to attack the US, kills privacy for the sake of security and does so while violating the constitution. The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, the people (not the government !) end up paying for this madness. Literally and figuratively.

[Disclaimer: this is a foreigner's point of view. US citizens are welcome to step in this discussion and correct my points]

Not all of that follows. For instance, it is not automatically true that the US commits crimes against humanity by not using its own reserves. It can be argued that it shouldn't be buying oil from some countries, but it is really not its fault that the government of said countries is using the spare dollars to fuel their own agenda.

I see no merits at in any terrorist attacks on US soil, even if they resulted in no casualties. If some of these groups had a point, even then the responsibility must be shared between the US and other countries. "Oh, the US did such and such to my country!". Well, aren't we talking about sovereign states here? And again, not all foreign policies are about oil.

Yeah, I agree that it would be even more logical to spend more resources in order to develop alternatives to oil, at least as a fuel - there are other things we extract from it that are valuable and perhaps not as easy to replace, such as fertilizers and plastic. But research takes time, and oil is needed now. Furthermore, with such a huge military force, the US needs a lot of it. I can't imagine an all-electric airforce anytime soon, or electric tanks.

Now, if you want to argue that some (but not most, and certainly not all!) resources could be diverted from the military towards such programs, then I would agree. But I am not so sure that isn't happening already, it could as well be. Some of that research might be classified, even.

[_k]

Back in the 70s a lot of alternative systems were coming available when oil prices were sky high due to an oil embargo. A lot of initiatives were started all over the world to become independent and to develop alternative sources of energy. It's very unfortunate all that innovation was stopped soon after the oil price went back down again.

What it always seems to come down to : a threat followed by a political decision. But as soon as the threat is gone, almost all innovation is being stopped. And that's very unfortunate.

We've seen something similar when the US got the first human on the Moon. There was a threat, a political decision, a lot of innovation and then the threat disappeared and the funding dried up.

I wasn't born yet in 1969 but I do remember reading about it as a kid. And when I grew up I was wearing a sweater with the letters USA on it. I wasn't the only one, far from it.

And here we are. Decades later. There's another threat, imo. All we need is a political decision.

If it comes, I'm gonna try and be the first one to say it's a smart decision.

[mpyne]

The U.S. doesn't get most of its oil from abroad though. We get most of it between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The idea that the U.S. is ravenously hounding Arab countries for their oil is pretty much just a leftist myth at this point.

Most Arab oil goes to China, India, Europe. Even the Arab oil that does go to the U.S. is typically just to be refined and processed so it can turn right around and be exported back to other countries.

[dragonwriter]

> The U.S. doesn't get most of its oil from abroad though. We get most of it between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Canada and Mexico are part of "abroad", unless they've secretly been annexed when we were all distracted by Snowden.

Also, it doesn't get "most" from Canada and Mexico. More like a third of its imports.

> The idea that the U.S. is ravenously hounding Arab countries for their oil is pretty much just a leftist myth at this point.

OPEC, as a large cartel that controls enough of the world supply to substantially influence market prices, is an important target for influence for any purchaser of oil whether or not they directly get oil from them. That said, the US gets lots of oil from OPEC, including its Arab members; Saudi Arabia, for instance, is the #2 source of imported US oil, and Iraq and Kuwait, and are significant sources as well -- and of the non-Arab OPEC members, Venezuela is #4, some months topping Mexico as #3, and Nigeria is significant as well.)

See: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_...

[mpyne]

Canada and Mexico are encompassed by free trade agreements. I walked past a Canadian government poster right here in DC the other day gloating about being the #1 oil exporter to the U.S. I should hope that my overall point is not lost in the quibbling about whether invading Iraq for oil is the same as buying it from a willing seller next door.

As for OPEC, it is true that the U.S. imports a lot of oil... it is also true that it exports a lot of refined petroleum products, as I had hinted at but didn't make fully clear. The actual U.S. usage for oil can be mostly made up by domestic (incl. regional) production, the excess refining capacity goes to support giving Europe and other nations high-quality gasoline and other products.