Blur:
I don't agree with much of what you've posted in this thread, but I think that you are absolutely correct about lessening our depenence on oil. Doing so would be good not only for us, but also for the Arab world.
I saw an interview with Thomas Friedman (author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree) last weekend and he was advocating a national project on the order of the Apollo or Manhattan projects to develop alternative sources energy. Doing so would benefit us in the obvious way (i.e., making us less dependent on foreign oil), but also it would provide a new vehicle for funding pure research.
The point that Friedman made that had not occurred to me before is that reducing our dependence on Arab oil will benefit the Arab world, too. As it stands now, in order to prosper, many Arab nations just need to drill holes in the sand. If oil were not the lifeblood of the world's economy, they would be forced to "drill their people" (his phrase) to develop first world economies. According to Friedman, there is some promising activity on the fringes of the Arab world (e.g., Morocco, Bahrain), but the heart of the Arab world (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Syria) is dead.
- JNOV
p.s. As to your observation that there are lots of folks out there in the world that hate us, I agree. I disagree, however, that we could change that in any meaningful way by altering our foreign policy. We wield our power the way that any dominant nation would and the way that dominant nations have throughout history. We, like all nations, act in what our leaders perceive to be our own best interest.
No matter how we "tweak" our policy to appear more warm and fuzzy to the world, we will be reviled, for no other reason than that we are without question the most powerful nation on earth and, as such, have unrivaled ability to act unilaterally, thumbing our nose at the rest of the world (see Kyoto). Give a nation perceived to be much "nicer" than us that sort of power and they will soon be perceived just as we are, if not more poorly. Actually, I think that we have, by and large, exercised restraint and used our power responsibly, particularly when compared with nations that have held similar sway in the past. (We have resisted the urge to annex Canada, for example.)
More important than our power, however, is the fact that many of the nations that hate us most stringently are, in effect, Theocracies and see our very way of life as an affront to their fundamental belief systems. These countries hate us and would remove us from the face of the earth if they had the means. They do not play by the rules, and must be dealt with harshly. (Oh, and before you ask, WE make the rules.) It makes perfect sense to me that we do what we can to guarantee that they do not obtain the means to destroy or seriously harm us. As you stated, "[a]n intelligent person will revaluate any negative experience as to its probable cause in order to learn, adjust and move on."
