Energy Tribune
The ethanol boosters and neoconservatives just can’t help themselves. Whenever challenged on the facts, they reflexively respond “Saudi Arabia.” Merely invoking the name of the world’s biggest oil producer allows them to conflate the issues of oil and terrorism, and in the process, provide justification for the billions of subsidy dollars required to keep the ethanol scam alive and well.
Examples of this reflex appeared twice recently. In mid-March, Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal attacked the ethanol lobby in a column titled “Ethanol Liberation Movement.” One of Jenkins’ primary targets was James Woolsey, a leading neoconservative, staunch backer of the Second Iraq War, and one of the loudest voices promoting ethanol and the myth of energy independence. Jenkins singled out Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, as one of the “security hawks” who are “pitching the most extravagant woo at corn growers” and who “seem bent on rushing into a devil’s bargain with the unfortunate wrinkle of surrendering their souls upfront.”
Responding to Jenkins’ op-ed in a letter to the Journal, Woolsey said that by buying from the “oil cartel” America is “subsidizing both the spread of hate promoting Wahhabi madrassas and the payment of, well, protection money to the pool of potential terrorists.” In other words, Woolsey is saying that the Saudis are the prime sponsors of international terrorism and America should put them out of business.
The second example: In late March, I discussed ethanol on a national TV news program. My counterpart was Robert Dineen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the trade group that represents Archer Daniels Midland Company and other big ethanol producers. After I pointed out that ethanol depends on huge subsidies, doesn’t reduce greenhouse gases, and cannot substantially reduce oil imports, Dineen charged that I wanted to stick my head “in the sands in Saudi Arabia and just ignore the problem.’ The obvious implication being that the Saudis are America’s enemy and ethanol is a weapon to wield against them.
There are two falsehoods at work here: the first is that petrodollars cause terrorism; the second, that the U.S. can isolate the Saudis, and the other petrostates, if only it produces enough ethanol.
Over the past three years, the neoconservatives have repeated the “oil causes terrorism”line so often that it has almost become accepted fact. To cite one example: U.S. Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, says that the U.S. is “financing both sides of the war on terrorism” due to our oil purchases.
The problem is that global terrorists don’t depend on petrodollars, Saudi or otherwise. G. I. Wilson, a retired Marine Corps colonel who has written extensively on terrorism and asymmetric warfare (and served 28 years on active duty (15 months of which was spent fighting in Iraq) says the conflation of oil and terrorism is a “contrivance.” For terrorists, Wilson says, “the money flow doesn’t come from oil, it comes from drugs, human trafficking, and the weapons trade.” Further, last November, the New York Times reported that the insurgency in Iraq had become “self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting,” and other crimes.
Second, the idea that the U.S. can put the Saudis out of business is several miles beyond ludicrous. The global oil market is just that: global. In 2005, the U.S. bought crude oil from 41 countries, jet fuel from 22, and gasoline from 45. It’s difficult to imagine another business that’s more truly global. Nevertheless, the fantasy persists that the U.S. can, in the words of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, surround itself with “a wall of energy independence.” A wall which would presumably be built out of ethanol and other fuels that require massive subsidies.
Saudi Arabia remains the favored bogeyman of the neocons and ethanol boosters because it neatly fits the world view of the energy isolationists. In their minds, once the Saudis are deposed, America will prosper in a Christian-dominated world that overflows with cheap motor fuel and rich Iowa corn farmers.
The reality, of course, is that Saudi Arabia, despite its many challenges, remains the dominant player in an increasingly interdependent global energy market. And no amount of ethanol is going to slow that growing interdependence.
