Brookings Institution’s New Idea: Try Failed Solutions Again

Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Institution’s Intelligence Project, published a piece in the Daily Beast last Sunday with the provocative title, “Why’s Al Qaeda So Strong? Washington Has (Literally) No Idea.” That is certainly true, but Riedel’s recommendations for how the political establishment can get a clue and finally defeat the jihadis are nothing but tired retreads of analyses that have been tried and have failed again and again.

The solution to the middle east problem is to cut the price of oil to $30 a barrel.

What does oil have to do with the middle east issues. All the radical madrases around the world are funded by the gulf Arabs.

Low oil prices will cause them to sharply reduce their giving to madrases.

It will take about 10 years to get there. Maybe 15. But its nearly guaranteed to happen.

How?

First by supply shocks as is happening now.

But this won’t get prices down much below $60@barrel.

Lower priced oil is tremendously stimulative to the worldwide economy. Higher growth will create higher demand for oil and higher oil prices, while lower oil prices kills new supplies of fracked oil.

So over the next five years, oil will trade in a price range.

However, after 2020 or so the conversion of diesel fueled big city buildings, interstate trains and trucks and local haul trucks and buses over to natural gas....plus the take up of electric cars world wide will eat into demand for oil.

This steady erosion of demand will take oil down in the second leg to the $35 range by 2025-2030.

Why $35? Currently natural gas and coal in btu terms are both at about $35@barrel.

doesn't take a ton of money to hijack a plane

or to cause a fort hood

the khhhhhockharauhn puts it plainly - its them or us - we get no vote - they have unilaterally decided it

its their choice - we can only slaughter them if we want to live in peace AND retain our liberty

maybe if they catch me on a ‘compassionate conservatism’ day, i’d let them live under a saddam type dictator that would rape and slaughter them - but that is not today

Re:Here’s a tip to the pinkos who run things at Brookings:

You mean like Strobe Talbott who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration and was dubbed "Russia's man in Washington?"

http://www.kentimmerman.com/news/strobe.htm

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Obama's National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, is also a Brookings alumnus. Rice served on the staff of the National Security Council, and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during President Bill Clinton's second term.

Although the Rwanda genocide occurred on Susan Rice's watch, she was even reluctant to use what came to be called the "g-word" (i.e."genocide") to acknowledge the reality of what was happening there.

Even after the reality of genocide in Rwanda had become irrefutable, when bodies were shown choking the Kagera River on the nightly news, the brute fact of the slaughter failed to influence U.S. policy except in a negative way. American officials, for a variety of reasons, shunned the use of what became known as "the g-word." They felt that using it would have obliged the United States to act, under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. They also believed, understandably, that it would harm U.S. credibility to name the crime and then do nothing to stop it. A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking. Regarding issues that might be brought up at the next interagency working group, it stated,

1. Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday-Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually "do something." [Emphasis added.]

At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. "We could believe that people would wonder that," he says, "but not that they would actually voice it." Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, "If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant."

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/05/5_highlights_from_susan_rice_s_diplomatic_career_national_security_advisor

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