Oberwetter (right)
No protection from our friends and allies in the House of Saud. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
YANBU, Saudi Arabia — The U.S. ambassador traveled to this Saudi oil-industry city Monday with a simple message for the gathered Americans: Go home. We cannot protect you. Huddled in a meeting room in a Holiday Inn still pocked with bullet holes after the latest in a string of attacks on Westerners killed two Americans and four others, many said they would heed his words.The first to go were among the 90 foreign employees of ABB Lummus Global Inc., a Houston-based oil contractor whose offices were attacked Saturday by four gunmen trying to encourage Saudis to join the resistance against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
The Saudi interior minister said early Tuesday that the attack appeared to have been carried out by Al Qaeda. Arriving in Kuwait City for a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Prince Nayef was asked whether Usama bin Laden's terrorist network was responsible.
"Yes, but we need time to confirm this," he said. ...
Journalists were barred from the meeting between Ambassador James C. Oberwetter and Yanbu's American community. But Oberwetter later told a news conference that he had encouraged the families to leave the country.
"While we are doing this urging, the U.S. government is not in a position to cause that to happen," he said. "Those are individual decisions by private Americans and by those companies."
People who attended the meeting said the ambassador spoke bluntly. His message was, "It is time for us to pack our bags and go home. ... We cannot protect you here," said a teacher at a local American school. A colleague nodded in agreement.
Reflecting the tense climate in Yanbu, the two women -- like many foreigners -- refused to give their names.
"I'm very, very frightened," the teacher said. "We still don't know whether we are going to stay or not, but I think it's really time for us to leave."
It would be salutary if Americans and other Westerners left not only Yanbu, but also Riyadh, Jiddah, all of al-Hasa (where the oil production takes place), even those Frenchmen now working for Totalfina, exploring for oil in the Empty Quarter. All of them.
Saudi Arabia would sink. No more Western doctors to deliver babies, or treat the Saudis. No more Western teachers. No more Western technical experts. The results would be stark, and would show the complete dependence of this fabulously rich country, that has received several trillion dollars in unearned and unmerited oil wealth, and has failed to create anything like a modern economy. It has relied, from top to bottom, on hired workers, at the bottom the house slaves from the Philippines, India, Cambodia, Thailand, and at the top, the American and Western European professionals who, quite rightly, should now leave.
Yes, the one worry is that oil production will suffer. Let it. Let us be given a sample, in the price spike, of what will soon happen -- by 2010 probably -- when the total oil reserves in the world start to decline, and demand continues to rise. There has to be some shock before that, some shock to get Washington to put real money into alternative energy sources -- not 1-2 billion dollars for hydrogen fuel research, but 30, 50, 100, 120 billion (in other words, at least as much as is being wasted now in Iraq, in a sisyphean and vain effort both to "bring democracy" to a state riven by sectarian and ethnic hostilities, and based not on the idea of the individual citizen, but on tribalism), to give the end of the oil age the full attention it deserves.
And while Saudi Arabia's revenues go down, that can only mean less money for supporting Wahhabi madrasas in Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, and less money to pay for the mosques in Rome, London, Paris, and all over the United States (80% of which have their mortgages paid by Saudi funds -- a geopolitical cult, supported by a foreign power. Extraordinary). Saudi Arabia is not our "staunch ally" (as the BBC likes to call it, endlessly). It is not, and has never been, our ally. It is in every way hostile to the basic principles of the United States -- to pluralism, to equal rights for women, to free speech, to free and skeptical inquiry, to the belief that power flows from the expressed will of the people, and not some fossilized record, in the Shari'a, of Allah's totalitarian regulation of human life. Saudi Arabia sells us, and everyone else oil. That is it. Punto e basta. We pay the market price, they take it.
Do you call the man at the gas station your "staunch ally"? Or even your "ally"? And when he raises his prices, to get as much as he can, whenever he can, is he then your "staunch ally"? This vocabulary, so ill-considered and idiotic, must end.
So it's goodbye to Arabia Felix, and the only country in the world named after a family: not Arabia, but "Saud's Arabia." As a friend of mine who spent years there building military cities once observed, summing up the place, "Money can buy everything -- except civilisation."
Hugh:
Well said. It will take a Manhattan Program / Apollo Project to get the USA re-focussed upon alternative energy sources, but if we have the will to do it then we will do it. What a tremendous opportunity this islamic enemy is bringing us. We can switch our entire energy economy over to the future, leave the fossil-fuel oil-based economy along with the fossilized religion of Wahabi islam to their slow and steady marginalization, and create a strong, vibrant new industry and jobs in the process!
Mike H
The only thought I have is, could other countries such as Europe or (name others here) step in to fill our shoes and therefore, weaken us as a superpower? Can someone speak to this?
There already are plenty of fuel alternatives. There is hydrogen energy, solar energy, and another one called Bio-diesal fuel. For really good fuel alternatives visit this site. The only thing holding us back is ourselves. We need to make a goal of when to completely switch over from oil.
I have also heard about scientists working on converting pig manure to oil. This idea has been around for quite awhile but new technology has made it much more economical lately. Read this
site. Scientists are really close to making this work. As I said research is not stopping us. We are stopping ourselves.
I can guarantee you if the United States government said that it would cut off all imports of oil by 2006. The United States economy would just adjust and move on. It wouldn't be that big of a deal. It is as simple as having your vehicles converted to biodiesel vehicles. Read this article about a school that converted its buses and heating to part biodiesel fuel.
This bio-diesel stuff is really neat here is a site that tells how to make your own bio-diesel and information on how to convert your own vehicle to bio-diesel.
bio-diesel
We are stopping ourselves from freeing ourselves from the middle-east.
This is sad, this what the terrorist wanted. Some times you have to stand and fight. That is not a easy thing to do but must be done.
On the contrary, Catherine: while I do agree that sometimes it's necessary to stand and fight, this doesn't have to be the case for oil. I'd love it in fact if we could so change our engines and other heating/transportation/etc. mechanisms to run on something (e.g., vegetable oil) that would not require any more petroleum imports, especially from the Middle East. In fact, it would be best for the West if we then stopped buying absolutely ANYTHING from the Arabs and any Muslims period so they could go starve with their then worthless petroleum-oils!!!! That would then help put that false "religion" of Islam in its place!!!!!
Actually, I think we should get out of the Middle East.
Then, the first time that there was a terrorist attack on Americans, none of the Islamists' excuses would hold water. It would be Islamic aggression pure and simple.
After such an attack, we would have all the justification that we need according to every definition of "Just War" (a Western, Christian concept)to declare war on the House of Islam and use our full might to defeat it. A few months of TOTAL naval and air blockade such as the British and French did to Germany in WWI or the U.S. to Japan at the end of WWII should do the trick.
In the interval after U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East and the causus belli, we could pour huge amounts of aid to the non-Muslim black African nations on the upper Nile so that they can build dams and irrigation projects on the river. Today, the Africans are not allowed to do that because Egypt claims 100 percent of the water in the Nile--even the rain that falls on the highlands of Ethiopia and the water in Lake Victoria!
The Arabs' much feared "oil weapon"? It is an illusion that we have let them fool us with for too long. In a real confrontation with the West, Arab ability to shut off the flow of oil would be impotent in the face of our ability to stop the importation of food and (given time to build the necessary water projects in Africa, and that development would greatly benefit the Africans) water.
Sound like the recipe for a siege on a grand scale, doesn't it?