May - How to Stop Putting Gasoline in Islamist Tank
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Clifford May-
It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.
If those championing Islamism were only stateless terrorist groups and tin-pot dictators, their geo-political significance would be minimal. But the regime that rules Iran is dedicated to waging what it calls a global Islamic revolution. And in Saudi Arabia, the state religion is Wahhabism, a strain of Islam that preaches the inferiority of infidels and the rejection of Muslims who do not share Wahhabi ideals.
These regimes float atop an ocean of oil, a commodity that is valuable thanks to those the Islamists despise. It was the Western mind that figured out how to pump oil out of the ground and refine it into fuels, including those used in internal combustion engines, another history-bending Western invention.
If there were even one oil-rich, Muslim-majority nation solidly committed to liberal democratic values, to freedom of religion and speech, to tolerance and minority rights, the challenges of the 21st century would not be so formidable. But there is no such nation.
Almost 80 percent of global oil reserves are controlled by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel, a conspiracy in restraint of trade. Most OPEC countries are autocracies. Many are hostile toward America and other free nations. From the income produced by OPEC oil comes most of the funds used to train and arm terrorists around the world, and to build nuclear weapons facilities in Iran. That makes the West’s dependence on oil a national security problem of the first order. What can be done? Robert C. McFarlane, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, wrote last week that we can and should be producing more of our own oil but “that is not enough. To outmaneuver OPEC, we need to eliminate oil’s monopoly as the only transportation fuel.”
The most promising possibility: Natural gas is a resource America has in abundance. Cutting-edge American technology – e.g. horizontal drilling and fracking – has made natural gas much easier and cheaper to extract. As McFarlane points out, natural gas “can be used in various forms to fuel vehicles. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is well-suited to drive long-haul and other fleet vehicles” but for “light trucks or automobiles, a better approach lies in using natural gas to make the liquid-fuel methanol, a high-octane, clean and safe fuel. ...”
He notes that producers can, right now, deliver an amount of methanol equivalent to the energy in a gallon of gasoline for about $3. The cars we drive require only minimal and inexpensive modifications to run on methanol – as racecars already do.
McFarlane isn’t proposing that we stop using gasoline and other petroleum products. He’s not proposing government subsidies for natural gas, methanol or other fuels. He argues for encouraging the creation of a competitive fuel market.
If that does not happen, only investors would suffer. If it does happen, however, having a larger fuel supply from diverse sources would provide multiple benefits: It would reduce the funds available to Islamists, reduce the drain on family budgets, dampen price volatility, and keep more money and jobs in the United States – thereby reinvigorating the domestic economy. The downside? There is none.
“Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman stressed that the foremost economic duty of government is to eliminate cartel pricing,” McFarlane notes. At the moment, however, government is not doing its economic duty. Nor is it not doing its national security duty: It should not require a Clausewitz to grasp that transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth to your enemy in a time of war is likely to be counterproductive. Yet, we are knowingly funding the “violent extremists” who want to kill us, as well as the more moderate Islamists who merely want to dominate us.
Islamists of both stripes must wonder: “How can people so technologically smart be so strategically stupid? Truly, this is a gift from Heaven.”[[In-content Ad]]
It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.
If those championing Islamism were only stateless terrorist groups and tin-pot dictators, their geo-political significance would be minimal. But the regime that rules Iran is dedicated to waging what it calls a global Islamic revolution. And in Saudi Arabia, the state religion is Wahhabism, a strain of Islam that preaches the inferiority of infidels and the rejection of Muslims who do not share Wahhabi ideals.
These regimes float atop an ocean of oil, a commodity that is valuable thanks to those the Islamists despise. It was the Western mind that figured out how to pump oil out of the ground and refine it into fuels, including those used in internal combustion engines, another history-bending Western invention.
If there were even one oil-rich, Muslim-majority nation solidly committed to liberal democratic values, to freedom of religion and speech, to tolerance and minority rights, the challenges of the 21st century would not be so formidable. But there is no such nation.
Almost 80 percent of global oil reserves are controlled by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel, a conspiracy in restraint of trade. Most OPEC countries are autocracies. Many are hostile toward America and other free nations. From the income produced by OPEC oil comes most of the funds used to train and arm terrorists around the world, and to build nuclear weapons facilities in Iran. That makes the West’s dependence on oil a national security problem of the first order. What can be done? Robert C. McFarlane, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, wrote last week that we can and should be producing more of our own oil but “that is not enough. To outmaneuver OPEC, we need to eliminate oil’s monopoly as the only transportation fuel.”
The most promising possibility: Natural gas is a resource America has in abundance. Cutting-edge American technology – e.g. horizontal drilling and fracking – has made natural gas much easier and cheaper to extract. As McFarlane points out, natural gas “can be used in various forms to fuel vehicles. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is well-suited to drive long-haul and other fleet vehicles” but for “light trucks or automobiles, a better approach lies in using natural gas to make the liquid-fuel methanol, a high-octane, clean and safe fuel. ...”
He notes that producers can, right now, deliver an amount of methanol equivalent to the energy in a gallon of gasoline for about $3. The cars we drive require only minimal and inexpensive modifications to run on methanol – as racecars already do.
McFarlane isn’t proposing that we stop using gasoline and other petroleum products. He’s not proposing government subsidies for natural gas, methanol or other fuels. He argues for encouraging the creation of a competitive fuel market.
If that does not happen, only investors would suffer. If it does happen, however, having a larger fuel supply from diverse sources would provide multiple benefits: It would reduce the funds available to Islamists, reduce the drain on family budgets, dampen price volatility, and keep more money and jobs in the United States – thereby reinvigorating the domestic economy. The downside? There is none.
“Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman stressed that the foremost economic duty of government is to eliminate cartel pricing,” McFarlane notes. At the moment, however, government is not doing its economic duty. Nor is it not doing its national security duty: It should not require a Clausewitz to grasp that transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth to your enemy in a time of war is likely to be counterproductive. Yet, we are knowingly funding the “violent extremists” who want to kill us, as well as the more moderate Islamists who merely want to dominate us.
Islamists of both stripes must wonder: “How can people so technologically smart be so strategically stupid? Truly, this is a gift from Heaven.”[[In-content Ad]]
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092