Yes but until recently (last couple of decades) they were irrelevant. What's changed? Well, organization and money I think. Organization in that they have the technology and backing of a handful of governments, giving them the opportunity to train, plan, and arm in impunity. And of course money has flowed from oil. Our strategy on the war has been to try to check the first item by cutting off access to sympathetic governments (Afghanistan and Iraq) so far but that just moves the threat to Iran and if we go there, they'll move to Sudan or Saudi or elsewhere. Eventually we'll lose political will to follow (I think we have already). So if that side of the conflict is turning out to be hard, what about oil money?
I'm not a global warming nut, but I think this country needs a major initiative to eliminate our dependance on fossil fuels. A manhattan project for our generation. If we succeed, the oil money will be cut off and the arab nations will, within a generation, go back to being irrelevant. If we fail, all we've done is waste money but the government would anyway so no real loss there.
Interesting theory and it probably has a lot of merit. But, you are missing one point. It will take 35-40 years to develop an alternative to fossil fuels, if ever. We are at a political standstill in this country about doing ANYTHING!
When was the last nuclear energy plant approved (the cheapest, cleanest alternative)? What! You say we are scrapping and selling off nuclear plants to foreign powers? Who decided that?
Well, what about drilling for the oil we already know that we have to reduce our dependence on foreign imports. It would take about 15 years to bring new fields — which have already been identified — online. There is no will in Congress to do that which would staisfy our oil needs for at least the next 100 years — and those are just the fields we already know about. I had a little public spat with my own Republican Congressman about blocking the vote on drilling in ANWR last year!
Well, then how about putting our vast coal reserves to good use? Even though the technology exists to burn coal cleanly (a cheap alternative for energy) my local PSC forced our local Energy company to scrap their state of the art coal plant (used to generateelectricity) and turn to natural gas — thus tripling the cost of energy to the consumer around here.
In the mean time we opened our borders and our colleges to Middle Easterners to try to get them to love us. (They don’t.) We dance around efficient energy use for ourselves with nobody wanting to do anything serious — blocking every new refinery, nuclear plant, coal fired plant, and exploration scheme. All the while we ship tons of money overseas to keep the Saudis and their cohorts pacified.
And I should add that the only alternative that seems to have any traction is ethanal. Do you know anything about ethanol? It would take every scrap of land from coast to coast to grow enough plant material to fuel the ethanal plants which couldn’t begin to feed our engines. And it costs more and takes more energy to creat a gallon of ethanol than it does to refine a gallon of gasoline. What kind of proposition is that? Lose, lose, I’d say.
In the mean time the price of corn goes up (already has around here) and then the price of meat goes up (what do you think hogs and cattle eat?) And refining ethanol also pollutes the air we breathe. Yi, yi, yi. There is no end to this!