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Any strategy requires a stratiegic goal.
The current goal is to aid in the creation of a state that is a democratic example for the Mid East and to create a state that will fight with The United States against terrorism. While not necessarily exclusive they are not necessarily synonymous and both might well be pure fantasy.
We need to lay out our vision for the future in such a way that we play one side and back it. A secondary goal is acceptable but a primary goal is essential. Once you understand your primary goal you can figure out who is with you and who is not.
Oil allows the Mid east to sit back and do nothing to get ahead, but there's no future in it.
Fundamentally, giving a sith about what happens in the Mid East is our biggest weakness. Every increased measure of self sufficiency, energywise, increases the strength of our hand in fact and in the eyes of those who assess us. Energy independence may be the only sure thing we can do to contribute to winning this war. We need to buy from our friends and not our enemies even if that means we have to do without or reinvent the current system. The term cheap energy gains relativity over time.
Things worked out pretty well for us during the cold war when there was a wall and everything that passed it recieved the utmost scrutiny. When you let the 'enemy' work your side of the wall by the barrelful, your over one.
Time to re-deploy the home front. So lets get out over the long term and let the situation resolve itself... oil prices through the roof... we do something about it through re-tooling our fueling and consumption accross the board... and the situation resolves itself as it competes with our model.
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