“Free Republic use to be a board of discussion..”
It still is, but Ron Paul wants to appease the Islamofascists by backing off and allowing them to take control of the Middle East. He has a growing Islamist support base. His supporters make the case that Arabs own the oil and should thus be able to control the oil. If control pertained only to race and a democratized area, it wouldn’t be such a problem. But he does not seem to understand that we cannot allow religious lunatics to control those resources.
Well, it is their oil. Believe it or not, we have our own, but getting the Federal GOvernment to permit drilling on half of the land west of the Mississippi (Which is Federally owned) has been a real chore. In addition, drilling on our Continental Shelves, with the exception of parts of the Gulf of Mexico has been blocked. Heck, we're importing oil from Canada and causing American producers to take a $30/bbl hit on prices because the pipelines are full of foreign oil.
Islam only has as much control as our government gives them.
If control pertained only to race and a democratized area, it wouldn’t be such a problem. But he does not seem to understand that we cannot allow religious lunatics to control those resources.
As I said, the resources are theirs. We do have alternatives, we do not have to shell out billions to militarily secure the Islamic states, we have the option of drilling for our own, and all that would take is opening up some areas to exploration and letting the free market run its course right here at home.
In fact, with growing worldwide demand for the resources, the price is likely to decrease some and then remain reasonably stable even if we did not buy Islamic oil, which would keep the domestic oil industry strong enough to provide much more of what we need.
ANWR is just the tip of that iceberg.