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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

There is no way to bypass Newton's Third Law of Motion---not in jet 
engines, not in politics.  The Bush Administration  as the "Money 
Narcotic" supplier to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Iran.---feeding the 
flames that consume us.




The New York Times
------------------------------------------------------------------------


         October 7, 2004

*OP-ED COLUMNIST*


   The Battle of the Pump

*By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN*

Of all the shortsighted policies of President Bush and Vice President 
Dick Cheney, none have been worse than their opposition to energy 
conservation and a gasoline tax. If we had imposed a new gasoline tax 
after 9/11, demand would have been dampened and gas today would probably 
still be $2 a gallon. But instead of the extra dollar going to Saudi 
Arabia - where it ends up with mullahs who build madrasas that preach 
intolerance - that dollar would have gone to our own Treasury to pay 
down our own deficit and finance our own schools. In fact, the Bush 
energy policy should be called No Mullah Left Behind.

Our own No Child Left Behind program has not been fully financed because 
the tax revenue is not there. But thanks to the Bush-Cheney energy 
policy, No Mullah Left Behind has been fully financed and is now the 
gift that keeps on giving: terrorism.

Mr. Bush says we're in "a global war on terrorism.'' That's right. But 
that war is rooted in the Arab-Muslim world. That means there is no war 
on terrorism that doesn't involve helping this region onto a more 
promising path for its huge population of young people - too many of 
whom are unemployed or unemployable because their oil-rich regimes are 
resistant to change and their religious leaders are resisting modernity.

A former Kuwaiti information minister, Sad bin Tefla, wrote an article 
in a London Arabic daily, Al Sharq Al Awsat, last Sept. 11 entitled "We 
Are All Bin Laden.'' He asked why Muslim scholars and clerics had 
eagerly supported fatwas condemning Salman Rushdie to death after he 
wrote a novel deemed insulting to Islam, "The Satanic Verses,'' but to 
this day no Muslim cleric has issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden 
for murdering nearly 3,000 innocent civilians, badly damaging Islam.

Building a decent Iraq is necessary to help reverse such trends, but it 
is not sufficient. We need a much more comprehensive approach, 
particularly if we fail in Iraq. The Bush team does not offer one. It 
has treated the Arab-Israeli issue with benign neglect, failed to find 
any way to communicate with the Arab world and adopted an energy policy 
that is supporting the worst Arab oil regimes and the worst trends. Phil 
Verleger, one of the nation's top energy consultants and a longtime 
advocate of a gas tax, puts it succinctly: "U.S. energy policy today is 
in support of terrorism - not the war on terrorism."

We need to dramatically cut our consumption of oil and bring the price 
back down to $20 a barrel. Nothing would do more to stimulate reform in 
the Arab-Muslim world. Oil regimes do not have to modernize or govern 
well. They just buy off their people and their mullahs. Governments 
without oil have to reform to create jobs. People do not change when you 
tell them they should - they change when they tell themselves they must.

The Arab-Muslim world is in a must-change human development crisis, "but 
oil is like a narcotic that kills a lot of the pain for them and 
prevents real change,'' says David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Where is all the innovation in the Arab world today? In the places with 
little or no oil: Bahrain is working on labor reform, just signed a 
free-trade agreement with the U.S. and held the first elections in the 
Arab gulf, allowing women to run and vote. Dubai has made itself into a 
regional service center. And Jordan has a free-trade agreement with the 
U.S. and is trying to transform itself into a knowledge economy. Who is 
paralyzed or rolling back reforms? Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, all now 
awash in oil money.

When did Jordan begin privatizing and deregulating its economy and 
upgrading its education system? In 1989 - after oil prices had slumped 
and the Arab oil states cut off Jordan's subsidies. In 1999, before 
Jordan signed its U.S. free-trade accord, its exports to America totaled 
$13 million. This year, Jordan will export over $1 billion worth of 
goods to the U.S. In the wake of King Abdullah II's reforms, Jordan's 
economy is growing at an annual rate of over 7 percent, the government 
is installing computers and broadband Internet links in every school, 
and it will soon require anyone who wants to study Islamic law and 
become a mosque preacher to first get a B.A. in something else, so 
mosque leaders won't just come from those who can't do anything else. 
"We had to go through a crisis to accept the need for reform," says 
Jordan's planning minister, Bassem Awadallah.

We have the power right now to stimulate similar trends across the Arab 
world. It's the best way to fight a global war on terrorism. If only we 
had a president and vice president tough enough to fight this war.


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