“Drill and Kill”

By Gary Flomenhoft

“I Paid My Income Tax Today” (excerpt: revised)
by Irving Berlin

Commissioned in 1942 by the U.S. Treasury Dept.

I paid my income tax today
I never felt so proud before
To be right there with the millions more
Who paid their income tax today
I'm squared up with the U.S.A.
See those bombers in the sky?
Rockefeller (Lockheed) helped to build ‘em, so did I
I paid my income tax today.

I paid my income tax today
A thousand planes to bomb Berlin (Baghdad)
They'll all be paid for and I chipped in
That certainly makes me feel okay
Ten thousand more and that ain't hay
We must pay for this war somehow
Uncle Sam was worried but he isn't now
I paid my income tax today

Flush, whoosh, gurgle, gurgle. What's that sound? Your tax money being flushed down the gold-plated military toilet into an endless cesspool in the Middle East. To protect what? Oil? The dollar? Freedom-loving Americans from freedom-hating terrorists?

How much? $251 billion so far. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz say it will be more like $2 trillion if all the post-war veteran costs and the like are counted. Check out their study, ‘The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,” at www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/cost_of_war_in_iraq.pdf)
How much of your tax money goes to the U.S. military? During the Vietnam war the feds began the policy of adding in Social Security funds with other funds to make the military look smaller. Removing this deception and allocating 80 percent of the debt to military spending, the War Resisters League estimates that 49 percent of the federal budget goes to military expenditures, amounting to $1,102 billion in 2007 out of the $2,251-billion budget.

You do the math. If your family paid $6,000 dollars in Federal Income Tax, you're giving almost $3,000 to fund the war machine – its charges for prior responsibilities (retirement benefits, veterans health care, etc.) and current expenses.

So what exactly does your $3,000 pay for? A worldwide military presence, including more than 500 “stations” or bases in more than 120 countries or territories. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Americans were promised a “Peace Dividend.” But with the disappearance of archrival U.S.S.R., the U.S. military/industrial/intelligence/pharmaceutical complex crafted a comprehensive plan to ensure American corporate access to the world's natural wealth, in particular petroleum resources.

Remember it was Jimmy Carter in 1980, responding to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, who said that Soviet troops posed “a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.” The “Carter Doctrine” proclaimed: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
So let's not make the mistake of thinking the current debacle in the Middle East is solely a neo-con affair. The current Republican administration is more blatant and clumsy about it, but the policy is bipartisan. Listen to most Democrats on the Iraq war, and you'll find they have little objection. They'll just do it “better.”

Energy is not a technical problem; it's a political problem. Energy prices are expressions of a political economy. Different politics, different prices. Governments can make any energy system the cheapest based on their energy policy. Right now Big Oil – and its subordinate partners in the fossil fuel production and distribution system, including those in the centralized electric power grid – rules the federal government, which in turn “regulates” interstate commerce.

Some say the Bush Administration doesn't have a policy on Peak Oil, which is the point at which oil extraction peaks and thereafter the demand exceeds supply. We're hitting the world peak now, and you can guess what will happen to prices. Since U.S. oil peaked in 1970, we now import 60 percent of our oil. But the neo-cons are well aware of Peak Oil. Matthew Simmons, who wrote Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, is a key Bush advisor who served on VP Cheney's secretive 2001 Energy Task Force.

In 2002 George Bush claimed, “We need an energy bill that encourages consumption.” The Bush administration does have a comprehensive energy policy that fully accounts for Peak Oil. That policy is Drill and Kill: Drill every square inch of the U.S. that has oil, and Kill anyone who gets in our way, in the Middle East or anywhere else.

Drill in Saudi Arabia and support a royal family to “protect the Kingdom” from extremists. Drill in the ‘Stans, and when the USA-paid Taliban leadership resists a pipeline deal, carpet Afghanistan with bombs. Drill in Iraq, feed Saddam Hussein's war machine WMDs to use against a neighbor and domestic enemies. When he starts selling oil to the European Union for euros, then employ “shock and awe” to initiate regime change. Solidify the Iraqis' need to endure freedom with a long-term military occupation that has claimed somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 civilian deaths (the $2 billion per-day budget for the occupation doesn't budget for verifying civilian casualties).

Drill and Kill — all thanks to tax dollars you and I have dished out: the federal government's unofficial, but blatantly obvious policy for guaranteeing 4 percent of the world's populations access to 25 percent of the world's energy resources. When I paid my income tax this April, I paid for Drill and Kill in this great Demockery of the “United” States.

The costs of ‘cheap'

How deeply has this pathological form of “national defense” inserted its poison into energy prices? Analysis of financial allocations within the U.S. military budget pierces the myth of “cheap oil” and “cheap gasoline.” The International Center for Technology Assessment recently updated its report on the external costs of gasoline, and estimates that $47.6 billion to $113.1 billion in 2003 dollars of the military budget is dedicated to protecting Middle East oil. Dividing that by the 4.15 billion barrels we imported results in an $11.47-$27.2 charge per barrel for military protection. According to studies by the International Center for Technology Assessment (1998) and the conservative National Defense Council Foundation (2003), when the hidden or indirect costs of maintaining the vast network of military bases are tallied up, American consumers pay between $5.20 and $5.60 per-gallon for gasoline – prices that are equivalent to or higher than those of other industrialized countries.

And those figures do not take into account obvious environmental and health costs and a wide range of other “externalities.” Drill and Kill, the hidden parasitic economy feeding off Americans' addiction to “cheap gas.”

Oh, and don't forget the $8 trillion—heading to $9 trillion – debt financing of the U.S. budget. As long as everyone needs dollars as the world reserve currency to purchase oil on the NYMEX and London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), the dollar is essentially backed by oil. Everyone needs dollars to buy oil, so we can borrow as much as we want and never pay it back. Is China going to cash in its treasury bonds, while U.S. shoppers are floating their whole economy through crap we buy at Wal-Mart?

Doubtful.

But what about the Iranian oil Bourse? (Bourse comes from French for exchange.) Much speculation is ongoing in the blog-o-sphere about the Iranian Bourse. Some say the reason we ousted Saddam was that he started selling oil for euros. Two months after the invasion, Iraqi oil was sold again for dollars. Proof, say the Euro-dollar-oil theorists. The Iranian oil Bourse is seen as a possible hidden agenda of the neo-cons, covered by the nuclear-proliferation smokescreen. This story says that when the Iranian oil exchange gets going soon, selling oil for euros, it will result in collapse of the dollar. (It's collapsing quite well on its own, thank you.) Others point out that the supply of euros is limited by European conservative central banking rules, which prevent an oversupply that could be used for a world reserve currency. Regardless, the Persian portion of the “axis of evil” certainly has an incentive to sabotage the dollar of the “great Satan.”

In more selfish terms, the Drill and Kill policy – combined with massive tax cuts that benefit the super rich, a burgeoning federal debt ($8.4 trillion), record-making trade deficits ($5.9 trillion projected over the next 10 years) and federal policies that keep Americans addicted to “cheap energy” – robs Americans of the very investment dollars needed to reconfigure the nation's energy supply and distribution systems and its transportation infrastructure, and to create new jobs in these sectors that will be safe from outsourcing.

Virtues of ‘decoupling'

Let's address the skeptics who say that “renewable energy can't supply all our energy needs.” Iceland and Sweden think they can do it, but what about the U.S.?

Reduce the tremendous inefficiencies padding our current energy consumption, remove the massive federal and state subsidies to fossil fuel conglomerates, and educate Americans to the true costs of “cheap” gas, natural gas, oil, and electricity – in other words, level the playing field. Then let's see how renewable energies stack up against fossil fuels.

The cornucopians will win the bet on electricity. In just three states – North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas – we have enough wind potential to power the entire U.S. electrical grid. A 140-mile by 140-mile square of Arizona has enough solar energy to power the entire U.S. grid. This potential doesn't include geothermal, hydro, biomass, ocean, and a range of exotics, nor does it address the promise of local renewable production, in particular the wide range of residential/small-commercial wind, solar, and biomass options. Sustainable production of electricity isn't the problem.

Vehicle fuel is a much bigger deal. We could integrate more realistic CAFE standards, more hybrid vehicles, and biofuels into the American love affair with the automobile. And charge consumers the true costs of gasoline to help them make “more informed” decisions. An obvious piece of the transportation solution would be to invest in the classy, energy-efficient European-style urban transit and continental rail systems.

Those Vermonters who claim we can't kick our addiction to “cheap gas” are either energy corporation apologists or consumer defeatists. Others of us have faith in Vermonters' inherent morality and innovative ability. We just need to do two things. We need to decouple ourselves from U.S. imperial overreach, insane fiscal policies and an immoral Drill and Kill energy policy. And we need our tax dollars back to invest in energy independence.