Short News and Commentary

 

FIGHT TERROR: DRILL IN AMERICA

Not long ago, a British newspaper published an account of Osama bin Laden’s upbringing. Numerous details illustrate the wealth that has rained down on Saudi Arabia’s leading families—like the trip to Sweden made by young bin Laden on a private jet carrying a Rolls-Royce in its cargo bay. The ultimate source of all this disposable income, of course, is oil, American petrodollars in particular. (In years past, even the Bush family got tangled up in oil deals with several members of the bin Laden clan.)

America needs oil, Middle Easterners have it in abundance. So we pay dearly—and in the process have allowed untold funds to be recycled into organizations that spawn horrific violence. This has happened not only with the Saudis but also with other petroleum-rich nations like Libya, Iran, and Iraq—a regular rogue’s gallery. Groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas, as well as tyrants like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qadaffi, and Ruhollah Khomeini would have remained impotent actors in funny uniforms and robes absent the oil money that poured into their coffers courtesy of our reliance on imported petroleum.

Oil has been the mother’s milk of Middle Eastern terror.

While militant Islam provides the instruction book for today’s most virulent forms of anti-Americanism, the power source for this potent xenophobia is our own preference for foreign crude—freely chosen over the alternative of more aggressively developing domestic energy sources.

Consider these numbers: About 8 billion barrels of oil are imported each year by nations that do not produce enough to cover their own needs. By far the biggest importer is the U.S.—which buys nearly 4 billion barrels—a little less than half the total purchases.

The main beneficiaries of this American failure to provide for our own energy needs are the Middle Eastern nations which put up for sale 6 billion barrels of oil each year. These sales bring those societies—all of them undemocratic and at least latently hostile to the U.S.—roughly $150 billion annually in cold cash.

If America stopped importing oil at its current pace, oil prices would collapse completely. The gush of money into Middle Eastern dictatorships would be choked to a trickle. The practical ability of disaffected members of those societies to wreak havoc around the globe would be minimal.

By dramatically raising the price of oil on the world market, America’s heavy purchases of foreign crude greatly benefit the countries that have become breeding grounds for Islamic extremism. (It doesn’t matter whether we’re actually buying our supplies from Middle Easterners or others; so long as we’re the main purchasers of exported petroleum, we’re the ones who keep the global price propped up.)

Our failure to provide for our own energy needs has made Muslim-controlled oil infinitely more valuable than it should be. And by funding not only terror cells but also irresponsible state research on nuclear, bacteriological, and chemical weapons (not to mention guided missile systems that may someday deliver those nasty packages), Mideast oil money has become a scourge to nearly every nation on earth.

No military solution alone can eradicate this threat. We must dry up the supply of money to the terrorists and the nations which support them. The best way to do this over the long run is to stop sending them petrodollars—by making greater use of our own energy reserves.

The U.S. has energy resources in abundance: untapped oil in Alaska, on our continental shelf, within the Rockies, and under the Great Lakes; coal enough to last for centuries; one of the planet’s biggest balloons of natural gas; and nuclear energy technology that can produce economic, safe, and clean power in almost infinite supply. Only environmental phobias and political obstructionism prevent us from becoming far more energy self-sufficient. (See TAE’s September 2001 issue.)

Permitting a wave of intelligent new domestic oil and gas drilling, making a strong commitment to building third-generation nuclear plants, supporting greener methods of burning coal, and improving the use of other existing energy supplies could make the U.S. largely independent of Mideast oil suppliers—forever.

This would strengthen the American economy. And it would eventually allow us to thumb our noses at the sheiks and ayatollahs and tyrants who now use their oil incomes in their quest to destroy us.

 

DON’T JUST TRUST—DETER AND DEFEND

Foreign policy dreamers have always insisted the U.S. should rely on treaties to keep itself safe in a dangerous world. Liberal-minded idealists have promoted a whole parade of paper agreements as guarantors of our national security: nuclear disarmament treaties, anti-landmine treaties, treaties promising not to use chemical weapons, the ABM Treaty (which is said to be worth sacrificing a national missile defense for), and so forth.

What we’ve recently learned about one of the most prominent anti-war treaties of the last generation should therefore be sobering to today’s parchment warriors: In 1972, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and about 100 other nations signed a treaty in which they promised not to use or develop biological weapons. We know that many nations, including some of our opponents today in the Middle East, have egregiously violated these promises in secret.

But what is most disturbing is the discovery that our most threatening competitor, the Soviet Union, never had any intention of being bound by its treaty promises. Literally at the same time they were soberly signing away their right to use germ warfare the Soviets were launching a massive secret program to create biological weapons that were deadlier and more numerous than ever. They put leading scientists to work developing bacteria and viruses that would be extra lethal and immune to antibiotics and vaccines. In 1992, when this organized cheating wound down due to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet bio-warfare program employed at least 30,000 people. Some Russian scientists may still be working along the same lines, despite today’s continuing biological weapons ban.

So it turns out America’s biological disarmament was unilateral, though we were trusting otherwise. The moral: Don’t rely on a piece of paper to constrain a potentially lethal opponent.

 

WE DIDN’T MAKE THESE MONSTERS

Ever since the September 11 attacks, it’s become a matter of faith on the American Left that the United States somehow created the terror-loving Taliban regime.

The United States made mistakes under its last three Presidents, and it’s possible that a different foreign policy could have stopped the Taliban from emerging. But America’s errors were almost entirely sins of omission. Here’s what happened:

The anti-Soviet mujahedin funded by the U.S. consisted of seven factions. Some were fundamentalist Muslims who envisioned an Islamic state along the lines of Saudi Arabia. About as many had a cosmopolitan orientation and wanted a Westernized state similar to Turkey. The Taliban were not among the mujahedin factions at all, and all of the Taliban’s important leaders, including Mullah Omar, were out of the country, mostly in Pakistan, during the war against the Soviets. Some American aid surely did seep into Taliban organizations, but only as one group among many.

Partly because of their ideological diversity, the mujahedin failed to unify when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Afghanistan lurched from regime to regime as living standards deteriorated.

Anxious to control the lucrative Afghan trade in opium poppies, the Pakistanis supported the Taliban, whom they believed would be weak and easy to manipulate. The United States did not aid the Pakistanis in these efforts, and actually cut off financing to them at about the same time in the wake of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.

Wealthy Saudis did, however, support the Taliban, some because they sympathized with the Taliban’s vision of a pure Islamic state; some because they feared a more pro-Western government would aid the tapping of Central Asia’s vast energy resources, undermining oil prices in the process; and some who saw their donations as “protection money” to keep the Taliban and their ilk out of Saudi Arabia. The Taliban, for their part, began a military campaign in 1994 and consolidated control over 90 percent of the country by 1996. Some mujahedin fighters joined them, but the Taliban’s leaders had never worked with the United States.

In the mid 1990s, the U.S. did little to stand in the way of the Taliban, probably the single worst mistake of American foreign policy during the ’90s. But we didn’t create the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.

 

DON’T COUNT ON MUSLIM SUPPORT

Measuring public opinion in an open society such as ours is challenging enough. Measuring opinion in a military dictatorship where people may be reluctant to respond truthfully to interviewers is much more difficult. So some caution is in order in interpreting the results of a recent Newsweek poll carried out in Pakistan in mid October.

In the survey, 83 percent of Pakistanis said they sympathize with the Taliban in today’s conflict. Only 3 percent sided with the U.S. Eighty-two percent described Osama bin Laden as a holy warrior, just 6 percent as a terrorist. When asked who was responsible for the attack, only 12 percent named bin Laden. Almost half, 48 percent, said Israel was responsible and a quarter chose “a U.S. group.” Not all responses in the poll were this anti-American, but it’s clear that substantial numbers of the Pakistani people (and presumably many other Muslims) are not our friends.

 

DOES HOLLYWOOD SEE THE LIGHT?

“She knows, she knows” is a line uttered by Annie Sullivan in stage and film biographies of Helen Keller. Helen had been both blind and deaf since early childhood, and the teacher is jubilant when her student has a first epiphany of understanding after long held captive in the dark.

Hollywood may be experiencing a similar revelation in the aftermath of September 11. Having for many years embraced values markedly different from those of mainstream America, the entertainment world now shows signs of wanting to bridge some of the gap. And it may be an emerging generation of actors and writers, less self-centered and jaded than their Baby Boom predecessors, who lead the way.

Recently, 17-year-old actress Liza Baron, the daughter of two Hollywood producers, went to her principal at Hollywood High to request that silent respect be paid to the victims of the terrorists. Actress Marie Downing, 26, of the TV sitcom “King of Queens” states that she “never took being an American for granted.” She adds, “the rules imbedded into our society are far preferable to the chaos of some other cultures.”

Patrick Nagle, 25, who just completed a film co-starring veteran performer Wilford Brimley, says “building the nation’s confidence” should be one of the “honors” of being an actor. “Maybe a new John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart will rise to invigorate the American spirit,” he suggests hopefully.

This young idealism is matched by some encouraging new realism among certain senior members of the entertainment establishment. Emmy-winner David Milch, a former producer of “NYPD Blue,” recently wrote a stirring letter to the New York Times stressing the need for prayers for “the brave, determined defenders of freedom and human dignity.”

Playwright Maxwell Anderson once noted that an audience only feels satisfied when a hero is forced to confront a moral dilemma and become a better person. Perhaps now, Hollywood is going through just such a transformation.

—Cheryl Rhoads is a Hollywood actress, writer, and teacher.

 

MAJOR LEAGUE PRIORITIES

One impressive moment in this fall’s baseball season came when Los Angeles Dodger star Shawn Green announced he would decline to play on September 26—because it was a holy day within his Jewish religion. In the process, Green sacrificed, among other things, his streak of consecutive games played, on the way to being one of the longest in the major leagues.

A similar, even starker sacrifice was made a few years ago by a 340-pound offensive football tackle for Brigham Young University named Eli Herring. A devout Mormon, Herring turned down a multimillion-dollar NFL contract because it would require him to play on Sundays, a holy day of rest according to his faith.

Crisp reminders to us all that there are things more important than money, celebrity, and occupational success—and that there are still Americans who recognize this.

 

THE DEATH PENALTY AND ITS ALTERNATIVES

President Bush has been denounced by European and American liberals for allowing the application of the death penalty. Among those whose cause was taken up by “human rights” groups abroad as well as domestically was Juan Raul Garza, a former drug kingpin convicted of three murders and described by one of his prosecutors as “the most violent man I’ve ever prosecuted.”

Former President Clinton twice postponed Garza’s execution, ostensibly on account of concerns about “the disturbing racial composition” of federal death row inmates—even though seven of Garza’s reported eight murder victims were Hispanic, and the presiding judge at his trial was Hispanic, as were at least six of the jurors. So what would the rights groups have us do with men like Mr. Garza?

Death penalty opponents often argue that executing criminals is a needless act of inhumanity, since the threat of a sentence of life without parole is just as effective a deterrent to crime. Whatever one thinks of that claim in the abstract, the fact is that no jury has the legal authority to prevent government officials years or decades in the future from offering clemency or parole after all—or to prevent judges at some later date from finding grounds for a new trial. The latter possibility is illustrated by the new trial recently granted to Wilbert Rideau, who shot three hostages during a bank robbery in 1961, killing one of them. Mr. Rideau, now 59, was originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to “life without the possibility of parole.” Now, having become a “crusading prison journalist” according to the New York Times, he persuaded a federal appeals court to overturn his conviction on the grounds that blacks had been improperly excluded from the grand jury that originally indicted him, which had one black member. No one denies Rideau’s guilt in the robbery and murder. But his lawyers are said to hope that in a new trial, jurors would have the option of convicting Rideau of manslaughter rather than murder, allowing his release on the basis of time served.

Anti-death-penalty groups know, of course, that there is no guarantee a sentence of life without parole will actually be followed. Potential killers likely know it too. Those of us who believe that the punishment should in some sense fit the crime may doubt that the prospect of spending two or even more decades behind bars, with the hope of ultimate emancipation, and with the opportunity meanwhile to pursue careers like “crusading prison journalist,” constitutes just retribution for an act of cold-blooded murder like Mr. Rideau’s. And in a society that doubts its right to impose the ultimate penalty on individuals who have committed the most vicious crimes against their fellow citizens, the horror against committing murder will tend inevitably to erode.

—David Schaefer is a professor of political science at Holy Cross College.

 

OPEN THE SPACE FRONTIER

Mankind seems further than ever from exploring other worlds. Launching payloads into space remains prohibitively expensive, ensuring that, except for communications satellites, space remains a place shunned by private enterprise.

The Cato Institute recently brought together entrepreneurs, lawyers, aerospace executives, and space enthusiasts to discuss ways to make space more accessible to businesses. Some of their suggestions:

• Establish the rule of law. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 states that space is “the common heritage of mankind” and bars nations from establishing colonies on other planets. It’s unlikely private firms will invest much in space under those socialistic terms. Space lawyer James Dunstan notes that although satellites do not own the areas in which they orbit, international treaties have established a quasi-property right that enables thousands of satellites to coexist peacefully. Moreover, the inside of a building you create in space is your property. These sorts of protections need to be expanded.

• Establish a prize. When Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927, he wasn’t just a glory seeker; he wanted the $25,000 promised to the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Gregg Maryniak of the X Prize Foundation hopes a similar advance in space exploration could come about with the establishment of his group’s $10 million award for the first private company that flies “a reusable three-person spacecraft to 100 kilometers” above sea level twice in a two-week span. Currently, 21 teams are competing.

• Limit government’s role. For the past 40 years, NASA has been the primary developer of U.S. spacecraft, with a legal monopoly on U.S. launches until the Challenger disaster, and a quasi-monopoly since. Reason Public Policy Institute researcher Robert Poole called for government to return to the policies of the 1920s and ’30s. After World War I, the Post Office tried to set up its own air mail service, but after several crashes, the government decided to contract out air mail to entrepreneurs. It imposed no specifications on what airplanes should be used, which allowed enterprising types to experiment with different craft until they settled on models that worked. Many of today’s major airlines and aircraft companies trace their roots to those old airmail contracts that provided a steady source of income with operational freedom.

• Tax credits rather than loans. Like most infant industries, space capitalists have difficulty finding investors. Congress is considering several solutions. One idea, sponsored by Senator John Breaux (D-LA), would provide government loan guarantees to spacecraft builders, similar to current shipbuilding subsidies. But Marc Schlather of ProSpace warns that such guaranteed loans would saddle new space companies with high amounts of debt and make them dependent on government indefinitely.

Far better, he says, is a bill sponsored by Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA) which would offer tax credits to investors in space enterprises, rather than subsidizing specific businesses. The credit would favor start-ups over older companies. A similar notion has been advanced by Representative Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), who proposes that successful investments in space be exempt from federal taxes.

A thriving space frontier, many participants agreed, would encourage the same hardy virtues the old western frontier once fostered.

 

DON’T TREAD ON ME

Chuck Pillon knows that if you want something done right—or done at all—sometimes you just have to do it yourself. After years of trying to get King County to clear an obstructed section of May Creek on public land, Pillon and his neighbors in this rural region east of Seattle were growing weary of being flooded out of their homes at annual intervals.

That’s why on August 12 Pillon borrowed a backhoe and went to work. A few hours later, tons of silt, weeds, and debris were gone. The stream ran swift and clear. As newspapers puzzled over the mystery cleanout, Pillon admitted his act. He was promptly socked with criminal trespass charges and a $100,000 fine.

The way locals see it, that unfairly turned a knight into a villain. Nestled among the deep forests of the Cascade Mountains, the people of eastern King County are much more self-sufficient than their urbanized counterparts in nearby Seattle. A local plan calls for turning the neglected part of May Creek into a public park, complete with walking trails, picnic tables, and horse shoe pits. A free-flowing stream and placid side-pools for spawning salmon would be included. Residents want to name it Pioneer Park.

“We did everything right, but then the bureaucrats began their mad hatter’s dance,” Pillon relates. The county didn’t have permits from the state to do the work. The state pointed to federal rules regarding fish, while the Feds said the county hadn’t completed the right studies. The fact is, the government had no incentive to avoid a clogged creek. A bigger flood plain actually brings more private land under wetlands and Endangered Species regulation. When it was suggested that the state purchase private land for a public preserve, one government ecologist responded, “Why should we buy land when we can regulate it?”

—Paul Guppy is vice president of research at Seattle’s Washington Policy Center.

 

ZERO COMMON SENSE

A policy of “zero tolerance”—a fitting response to young hoodlums toting guns or illegal drugs—has over the last few years become a blanket standard in school districts across the country. Too often, school administrators apply it in ways devoid of reason:

• This year, Jeremy Hix, an honor student and bagpipe player from Holt, Michigan, was kicked out of school for the remainder of his junior year and the first half of his senior year after he wore full Scottish kilt regalia, including the ceremonial knife known as a “sgian dubh,” to his junior prom.

• Two days after Jeremy’s prom this spring, National Merit Scholar Lindsay Brown, also a trouble-free honor student, was yanked out of her classroom, handcuffed, charged with a felony, and carted off to jail for bringing a “weapon”—a round-pointed table knife—onto school property. The table knife had dropped onto the floor of her car while she was moving her belongings to an apartment near Gulf Coast University, where she was to enroll in an academic scholarship after school ended. Though prosecutors dropped the case against her, she missed graduating with her class and suffered the indignities of time in the slammer.

• A week before Lindsay Brown’s misplaced table knife turned up, a fifth-grader was permanently ousted from an Oldsmar, Florida elementary school for drawing pictures of a gun.

• Five-year-old Jordan Locke was suspended from Curtisville Elementary School in Deer Lakes, Pennsylvania for “bringing a weapon to school.” His “crime?” He was dressed as a fireman for his class Halloween party, and his costume included a small plastic firefighter’s axe.

• A second-grader in Alexandria, Louisiana innocently brought his grandfather’s pocket watch to school for “show and tell.” But, to his misfortune, the pocket watch had attached to its chain a tiny pocket knife with a one-inch blade. This weapon-toting young “criminal” was suspended and hustled off to an alternative school for a month as punishment.

Overkill of this sort begins with the traumatizing prevalence of real troublemakers in schools. It’s fanned by a fear of lawsuits and racial complaints that prevents some administrators from excusing obviously innocent behavior for fear of seeming to play favorites. But these preposterous decisions only further erode Americans’ already shaky faith in their public schools.

—Tait Trussell is a freelance writer based in Florida.