Post by Moses on Feb 12, 2005 17:31:05 GMT -5
Robert Bryce: Hawks go green with hybrid cars
11:07 AM CST on Saturday, February 5, 2005
Robert Bryce / The Dallas Morning News
President Bush has a simple policy regarding energy: Produce more of it.
The former oilman has packed his administration with veterans of the oil and coal industries. And for most of the first Bush term, his energy policy and his foreign policy were joined at the hip. Since the administration believed that controlling the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was critically important to the U.S. economy, the invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the president's energy goals and his foreign policy ones.
But a curious transformation is occurring in Washington: 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 a 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 fuels.
The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Mr. Woolsey and Mr. 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.
They say oil dollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Mr. Gaffney recently pointed out that America has become dependent on oil imported from countries that "by and large are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative."
Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall, when they jointly backed a proposal by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based think tank that tracks energy and security issues. The plan proposes that the federal government invest $12 billion to encourage automakers to build more efficient cars and consumers to buy them; develop industrial facilities to produce plant-based fuels such as ethanol; and promote fuel cells for commercial use.
The plan is keen on "plug-in hybrid vehicles," which use internal combustion engines along with electric motors charged by standard electric outlets.
Environmental groups, who have been in the weeds ever since George W. Bush moved in to 1600 Pennsylvania, are happy for any help they can get. "It's a wonderful confluence. We agree on the same goals, even if it's for different reasons," says Deron Lovaas, the National Resources Defense Council's point man on auto issues.
For Mr. Woolsey and Mr. 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.
They aren't the only Iraq hawks who have joined the cause. Among others, the Committee on the Present Danger is about to join the Prius-and-ethanol crowd. A driving force for America's military buildup since the '50s now reconstituted as an anti-terror group, the committee will issue a paper in the next few months endorsing much of the IAGS plan.
Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the green neocons believe they can persuade Congress and the White House to adopt their program. If they can persuade Congress and the White House to enact meaningful legislation on energy efficiency and conservation – issues that have been marginalized since the Carter administration – then perhaps the neocons will finally have a success story that they can brag about. Better still, it won't require the services of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Robert Bryce is a contributing writer at the Texas Observer and author of "Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate." His e-mail address is robert@robertbryce.com.
Online at: www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/020506dnedibryce.bee3e.html