Two Saudi oil facilities hit by drone strikes, Pompeo blames Iran
California Democrat Rep. Katie Hill says she would like to see more information on the attack before blaming Iran.
“No blood for oil.”
It’s a common slogan I’ve heard since the first Gulf War when I was a high school student. It was often repeated during the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s meaning? American men and women should not lose their lives to protect the oil supply in the Middle East.
I agree wholeheartedly.
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I hate war. I hate the idea of war and I hate that the millions of American 18-year-olds preparing to vote in their first-ever election have been born into a time of perpetual warfare.
I hate that every overseas conflict from South America to the Middle East to Asia, even still in Europe, presupposes that our American military must be deployed to keep the peace.
I hate that the leader of the free world is somehow responsible for the shipping lanes in the Pacific, the tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and cargo in the Mediterranean and the North Sea.
I hate that when Somali pirates terrorized commercial and recreational ships it meant that America had to step in and stop it.
No blood for oil.
Everyone who carried this idea, not just as a banner at a rally, but as a virtue in their heart, should be relieved that American energy independence, finally realized under the policies of President Donald Trump, means “no blood for oil.” And that’s true even when the world’s oil supply is threatened.
Attacks this weekend on Saudi oil fields, presumably carried out by their enemy Iran, will have tremendous negative consequences for the world’s oil supply and economy.
These brazen attacks have temporarily cut off more than 50 percent of Saudi oil from reaching the global market, and that threatens business, in every nation, because Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-largest oil producer.
But America is now number one.
Being the world’s largest oil producer is a blessing. Our great allies in the European Union have an enormous vulnerability that should keep their entire team of defense and security experts awake all night. Why? Because they are not energy independent.
More than 50 percent of EU nations’ energy is imported, the vast majority from Russia, some from America, but a lot from Saudi Arabia.
What will happen to European commerce as a result of the Saudi oil field attack? How about gas prices? What about shipping costs on consumer goods?
Can the European economy, already in a Jimmy Carter-style “malaise,” absorb the risk of losing its energy imports?
America is in a stronger position now than it was ten years ago when similar geopolitical circumstances caused oil prices to skyrocket to an all-time high of $146 a barrel.
Back then we were only producing 5 million barrels a day domestically. Today we are producing over 12 million and that number continues to grow every day.
Energy independence means that when Iran threatens Saudi Arabia and takes millions of barrels of oil off the global oil market, America persists unaffected.
It means when the ongoing socialist nightmare in Venezuela, the nation with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, takes millions of barrels of their oil off the global oil market, America persists.
“She persisted” is, of course, the manufactured slogan associated with Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.
The senator from Massachusetts, like all of the 2020 presidential candidates, would presumably embrace a “no blood for oil” mantra and speak passionately about the need for increased diplomacy. The Democratic candidates might even remind us of President Obama’s “Iran deal” which provided the terrorist nation with billions of dollars, much of it in cash.
One can only hope that Iran didn’t use that money for military purposes, say, attacking their enemy’s oil supply.
Regardless of our political persuasion, we can all agree for once on this: there should be no blood for oil.
The difference from previous Middle East energy crises is that today we are pursuing an energy policy that assures we will not shed American blood for oil.
We are eliminating burdensome regulations; we are opening up land to responsible energy development; we are seeing hundreds of thousands of people find jobs in the energy sector, move off government dependence, provide for the families and communities, all while lowering CO2 emissions and cleaning up our air and our water.
The energy policies of the 2020 presidential candidates and their dangerous, asinine “Green New Deal” means exactly the opposite. It means “Yes, blood for oil.”
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It means making America like Europe: beholden to a foreign power for its energy.
It means that the cost of food and home utility bills and gasoline prices are tied to the temperance of the mullahs of Iran’s Shia theocracy.
It ties our economy to the stability of the Middle East.
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For years I have heard the “no blood for oil,” refrain and I thought I knew what it meant. Maybe those who said it meant it as the reductionist phrase of naïve peaceniks.
But that’s not the case. No, it is now the proud phrase of American exceptionalism celebrating our energy independence. And right now, in coal mines and in fracking fields and on oil rigs and ocean platforms across this nation, there are millions of American energy workers whose toil and sweat mean that our energy security is sovereignty.
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Their labor in our energy industry means fewer of our brave military will go overseas to protect, fight, and die, for America’s interests.
It is thanks to the energy worker, not the leftist protester or the delusional 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, that today in America we have finally achieved “no blood for oil.”