Just a few questions. Nothing too taxing, I promise you.
1. Why is the New York Times giving valuable Op-Ed space to two individuals who claim we (the world in general) have more than enough crude oil in reserve to survive any supply disruptions caused by less oil flowing from the Middle East (say from some event involving — Iran)?
[C]ontrary to common understanding, there are robust stockpiles of oil around the globe that could see us through any foreseeable calamities on the world market. […]
… A coordinated release of reserve crude by the United States and its European and Asian allies could replace missing Iranian barrels for a year and a half. Iran is vulnerable; the West is not. […]
Today, Iran has more advanced anti-ship weapons, and it could surely harass commercial tanker traffic. But it would be hard pressed to sustain an anti-shipping campaign sufficient to reduce oil flows drastically for weeks on end, especially in the face of an intense military response. Even if Iran were able to reduce oil flow though the strait by, say, 30 percent, global reserves could replace losses of that magnitude for more than nine months — plenty of time for the Navy to counter Iranian military operations.
Such a nice rosy scenario. Another war in the Middle East wouldn’t be so bad, folks. We’d survive just fine. Trust us. Lot’s of oil to tide us over until the calvary US Navy comes to our rescue. But if that’s true . . .
2. Why is the nation with the second most vulnerable economy to any energy supply disruptions (some might argue the most vulnerable in light of their dependence on exports into the American market) so very intent on not seeing the Iranian nuclear crisis end up staring down the barrel of the military option?
President Hu Jintao of China urged other nations on Saturday to negotiate a resolution to Iran’s nuclear issue during a meeting with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making clear again that China disapproves of any move by Western countries to attack Iran with military force.
Mr. Hu met with Mr. Ahmadinejad on Saturday in the Great Hall of the People here after Mr. Ahmadinejad flew into Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, which began in the evening.
“At present, the Iran nuclear issue is faced with a rare opportunity for the resumption of talks, and we hope all parties concerned could seize the opportunity and show flexibility to push for a peaceful settlement of the issue,” Mr. Hu said in the meeting, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported.
3. Why, oh why doesn’t President Hu trust the brilliant scholars and intellectuals who write in the New York Times that any oil disruption, caused by a war with Iran, for example, isn’t that big a deal? I mean one has a Ph.D from MIT and the other is an assistant professor at Dartmouth who knows all about how to fight the evil doers. Just because they are both former national security fellows at The Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, an organization/think tank with well known links to the neoconservative and neoliberal (i.e., neoconservatives with Democratic Party affiliations) foreign policy establishments, including folks like Kimberly Kagan of the famous Kagan family really shouldn’t give anyone pause that their analysis is not completely unbiased and on the up and up, should it?
Bonus Questions:
A. Why is the New York Communist Times so willing to give space year after year to people who believe in a forever war in the Middle East in order to insure American hegemony in the region? The same sort of people who helped get us into our current mess in Iraq and who believe we live in an era of US nuclear primacy which we should use to our advantage to expand US global dominance?
B. Didn’t the New York Times learn anything from the debacle of its reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War when it relied on many of these same experts in and out of the government to promote the absolute necessity for taking out Saddam?
I can’t wait to see your answers.
To paraphrase that esteemed intellectual giant, President Bush, it’s hard work to keep catapulting the propaganda, but someone’s gotta do it.
Here’s an answer: dreams die hard. The NYT and the people it represents still dream of an American world hegemony, which they believe passes through domination of the Middle East. That’s the start and the end of it. Israel plays a bit part in the dream, but the core is to keep the world as it was in the 1950s, but without the Soviet threat to gum up the works. It’s not going to happen, of course, but it’s going to be some time before our so-called elite own up to it. As to the academic whores, they’ve always been with us, and always will.
Pretty simple answer to all of the questions. It is US against THEM. The sane people versus the two party duopoly, corporate owned media and the warmongering-oil-hungry corporations that they serve.
Okay I’m not the smartest one on this site, certainly not the most knowledgeable.
But we are being played by the Military-Industrial-Big Oil Complex which is trumpeting a new Cold War, with Iran being the focus of the first battle. Take sides: Russia-China-Iran versus USA-Israel. Just as we took Iraq’s oil, we will have Iran’s; Israel will remain the only superpower in the Middle East; and the world will remain a dangerous but lucrative place to sell military equipment.
British spy novelists resurrect their trade and Hollywood finally gets some decent scripts.
Simple answer?
Israel.
There it is.
Deal with it.
AG
You’d think that our government would have the same incentive – I’d certainly think so. Even if we’re not talking about revolution but rather ousting at the ballot box. But one of our political parties has been co-opted by groups of people who think that belief is more important than facts (and I don’t just mean the religionists here – the neocon wing and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party are just as guity as the theocon wing of thinking that belief and “will” are more important than facts on the ground). They honestly seem to think that facts are malleable things and if they just keep pressing it, the world will change around them.
3. President Hu knows that these people are talking faith and not reality. His situation is too precarious to trust to belief alone – he needs to look at the facts. Plus these idiots speak to “American Exceptionalism” when Hu most assuredly knows that it is China that is the exception and is the most important country in the world. So why would he listen to a bunch of Americans?
A. See 1. above
B. Learn? Our press? Ha! They probably learned that they sold a lot of papers/got a lot of ad impressions from the web over that timespan. If that was the case, why not do it again? For-profit media loves its wars – they’re good for business…
A) See answer to 1).
b) See answer to 1).
Regarding #6, I don’t think that The New York Times is in the “learning mode”. They are in the “propaganda mode”.
Whereas the question stumps me, at least the linked op-ed piece looks some thought process was invoked as it was written
Albeit barely. When I read the following fanciful passage, it occurred to me that it could have been written by other NY Times columists:
Let me pose a more basic question: Why does the NY Times continue to feature people who write light-weight stuff like the following? These were taken just from recent columns. I won’t prejudice you by inserting the names here.
Seriously, what does a columnist have to write before being fired or to be held accountable for adding value to public discourse? Or, by being syndicated by the NY Times (I suppose?), do columns like these represent revenue for the NY Times? If so, that may answer the first question: Perhaps publishing nonsense by guest op-ed writers provides revenue. I don’t know the business model though…
A number of salient points missed here:
1.[.]”we (the world in general) have more than enough crude oil in reserve to survive any supply disruptions caused by less oil flowing from the Middle East (say from some event involving — Iran)? “
Those two individuals are right. In addition to ALL countries’ strategic oil reserves, you need to count the thousand of super oil tankers floating on the oceans – no where to off load the oil. On July 23, 2008, the USGS announced 412 billion barrels of oil lie off the coast of Russia and Canada. The rush is on. Harper the neocon will be relected with help from his southern bethren Frank Luntz and of course the US is attempting to cower Russia. Good luck with that envious eye for other peoples oil.
As for the price of oil fixed at a whim. Look at the recent retreat of oil prices; down from $147/bbl to under $105 and going lower. Has nothing to do with demand and financial guys have restated the price of oil (even factoring the expensive cost of extracting from the Canada tar sands) should be at $60/bbl given the current fundamentals. There are huge reserves in the ground that remains capped. The Mexican budget for 2009 is based on $80/bbl oil Hmmmm.
2. Iran is not the problem. We’re focusing on the wrong country. It should be Pakistan.
This piece was published in of all newspapers “The Jerusalem Post*
Thanks for the diary, Steven D. You’d think the NY Times would have learned its lesson about the hit to its credibility from the whole Miller/Iraq fiasco.