I Wonder What We Were Doing The First Time?

[Crossless2.0]

We need to wash our hands of the region.

Yes, but it's not easy for an addict to break with his dealer. Nearly forty years later, and people are still whipping on old Jimmy Carter as some kind of naïve do-gooder who supposedly would have gutted our national defense and sold out our national interests in the name of rose-colored ideals. They mock him for appearing on national television in a sweater to make the point that people need to turn down their thermostats to save energy. They sniff contemptuously at his having installed solar panels on the White House roof. They excoriate him for suggesting that adopting a comprehensive and aggressive national energy policy is the moral equivalent of war. But here we are decades later: still in bed with the Saudis (despite their abysmal human rights record and having been the seedbed from which Al Qaeda grew), still up to our eyeballs in Iraq with no end in sight, and still tying our national policy to what is best for the oil companies rather what is best for our long-term security interests. And lest we ever forget: we're directly and indirectly responsible for the slaughter of untold numbers of people in that region; several thousand of our own troops have been killed or maimed; we've pissed away an incredible fortune of mostly borrowed money; and, possibly worst of all from the standpoint of our credibility to deal with future crises, our already tattered image as some kind of moral exemplar has been trashed -- probably for all time. Oh, and we aren't much closer to having developed those alternative sources of energy on a scale to compete with fossil fuels in the marketplace. Why? So business-as-usual can carry on and so John Q. Public can save a few bucks at the fucking gas pump while he fills his SUV.

Remind me, who were the naïve ones? It certainly wasn't the politicians carrying water for their corporate overlords in the energy and defense sectors, nor was it the policy hawks who believe it is our divine right to screw with everyone else. Those fuckers knew what they were doing all along. It was us, the U.S. voters, who continue to remind the world time and again that we are little better than overgrown children, too large and consequential to ignore but too stupid and selfish to truly lead.

When the shit storm finally hits this country -- and it will -- we will deserve every bit of it.