Citizen Journal

"Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas that Conquered the World." Consider terror. Over the last three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran -- not coincidentally the world's first- and second-largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money and, no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals.”

The thing about Fareed and Tom and Bill Maher, et. Al is that they have a point. It’s hard to push the Saudis and Iranians and Venezuelans when oil is almost $70 a barrel. If we could treat them as they need to be treated, we could advance the game-winning goal of democracy. Again, right on the money.

The problem is – perhaps because the idea of the Western world kicking oil is so inconceivable – they’ve never really thought what would happen if the day after oil.

The mullahs may be breaking into check-cashing places in Tehran when we’re zipping around in our 100 mile-per-gallon SUVs; and don’t get me wrong, I’d take great personal pleasure in watching the auction where Wahabi yachts go for pennies on the dollar.

This would, in all likelihood, spell the end of regimes that have stood the last fifty years on anti-American stilts. But how would they end? With a rousing ‘Goombayah’?

Governments that run out of money go into death spirals; and not peaceful ones. When oil-revenue governments can’t pay their workers salaries, or for healthcare or education or whatnot, and their economies subsequently tank, their situation that comes about would look a like Weimar Germany’s. And Afghans have been so kind to show us, you don’t need a lot of money to cause a lot of problems..

And even though we may not need the oil that’s sitting uselessly under Arab dunes, I have a feeling America won’t be able to walk away from whatever problems a broke House of Saud generates.

Similarly, the less marketable Middle Eastern oil is to the world at large, the less would be democrats in the Arab world have to work with. Oil money has done a lot of good for Norwegians, and Alaskans. As dreamy as it seems, an elected Saudi president or prime minister could do more to reaffirm the faith of Arabs in democracy as a hundred Hamid Karzais. That much money, spent right, could provide the sorts of services – healthcare, higher education, roads, etc. – the lack of which causes Palestinians and Iraqis to grumble that it’s all just a Yankee scam.

Perhaps buying $5 a gallon gas is the most patriotic thing you could do.