Neocon Logic

"As Green as a Neocon: Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses"

But a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.

The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a conference in Washington that America has become dependent on oil that is imported from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative."
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For Woolsey and Gaffney, the fact that energy efficiency and conservation might help the environment is an unintended side benefit. They want to weaken the Saudis, the Iranians, and the Syrians while also strengthening the Israelis. Whether these ends are achieved with M-16s or hybrid automobiles doesn't seem to matter to them.

Putting aside their affection for Israel aside for a moment, did these geniuses ever stop to think that maybe petrodollars are what is keeping the middle-east from degenerating even further into backwardness and fundamentalism?

And doesn't this show how twisted these people are-- that they care more about Israel than about energy conservation, which will be the most important issue for the planet in the next few decades? It is rather clear Israel can protect itself-- I don't think these geniuses riding around in more energy efficient cars is going to help Israel. They are just clueless, is all I can say.

UPDATE: Either these guys are really stupid and don't know how terrorism truly works (which may be the case for Gaffney but is a little hard to believe for Woolsey) or this oil-efficiency business is disinfo. Perhaps Gaffney is generally clueless while Woolsey may be specifically putting out disinfo.