Addicted to Oil
Posted : February 1, 2006 at 10:19 am [America/Los_Angeles]
If you just remove the dictators, and don’t also bring down the price of oil, you end up with Iran — with mullah dictators replacing military dictators and using the same oil wealth to keep their people quiet and themselves in power. Only when oil is back down to $20 a barrel will the transition from Saddam to Jefferson not get stuck in “Khomeini Land.” In the Middle East, oil and democracy do not mix. It’s not an accident that the Arab world’s first and only true democracy — Lebanon — never had a drop of oil.
— Thomas Friedman, “Addicted to Oil”
President Bush did talk about America’s addiction to Oil in his State of the Union speech last night. Let’s see if his speech is followed up by deeds that proves his sincerity on the subject.
- Anand
Category: US