My soul, such as it is, was tormented by the thought of giving a title to this essay. Originally I had planned to call this essay “The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost.” Then it dawned on me that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright had used that comment recently, and the results were far from rosy. The second title that occurred to me was one that originated with Lillie, my mother. It holds that “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” The fact of the matter is that my mother never saw a cat skinned, nor did I. Quite to the contrary, this house here has been the home, in order of progression, for Sean, Shannon, and Shamrock. All were wonderful cats, and I would die first rather than to see them skinned.
In the final analysis, this essay is about the greatly inflated prices that we are now paying for gasoline, food, and every other commodity that must be moved from its place of manufacture to its place of consumption. At heart it is my fundamental belief that the major moving force in these inflationary prices stems from the war that George Bush has declared in invading Iraq. Absent this war, we would still be friends, I hope, with the Arab nations and with the other oil-producers around the world. But that clearly is not the case.
Let us deal first with the chickens that are coming home to roost. When the United States invaded Iraq, it was interpreted in every Arab country as an assault on Islam, their religion. Even George Bush referred to our efforts there as “the Crusades.” One of his brighter aides told him that “the Crusades” were anathema to any person who subscribes to the Islamic faith. Obviously Bush did not know this, but in any case he has quit referring to our misadventure in Iraq as “a crusade.” So from day one of this tragedy, we are viewed as cruel interlopers who are determined to wipe out the faith of Islam. Westerners who believe that this is just another war are greatly mistaken. To the Arabs, it is an attempt to subjugate them and to destroy their faith.
So Bush has started this misadventure by poking every Arab in the eye and wondering why the Arabs do not love us as liberators. The fact of the matter is that much of the world’s oil supply lies in Arab lands. It is the ultimate foolishness to believe that any nation that has been deliberately poked in the eye is inclined to do you any favors during a time of strife. May I suggest that very few people in Saudi Arabia are distraught by the thought of Americans paying four dollars or five dollars per gallon for gasoline. The fact of the matter is that they are laughing their heads off at our predicament and their King told Mr. Bush last week that he should go perform an impossible sex act on himself when he asked for the Saudis to increase production. Clearly, the chickens from the Arab lands are indeed coming home to roost and before long, many of them will settle in Crawford, Texas.
Not only did we alienate the Arab countries, but we went out of our way to alienate the oil producers in Iran. If that is not good enough, it was our policy to isolate the Syrians who might have helped us at this time of dire economic circumstance. But the Syrians are saying to Mr. Bush, “Please get lost.”
Bush’s flouting of the feelings of the rest of the world did not stop with the Arab countries. In eight years in office, Mr. Bush has visited Canada only once, and that was a time he used to brag about his re-election and the fact that he now had additional capital to spend and he was going to use it. The result was an effort to privatize Social Security, which was roundly defeated. Mexico, our other neighbor, has been treated very much like a pariah. Unfortunately, Canada and Mexico have some oil to spare but they are not going to look favorably upon people who ignore them and step on their toes. So the Western Hemisphere chickens are indeed coming home to roost also.
To go a little bit further, Mr. Bush has gone out of his way to provoke President Chavez of Venezuela, a country where oil is produced in great gobs. Earlier this year, when he visited Africa, it was interesting to see that he avoided going to Nigeria. Whether we like it or not, Nigeria and Venezuela are afloat in oil, and it is of the best kind, called “sweet” oil. But the Nigerians and the Venezuelans are not prepared to send us any love letters. They are sending their chickens to the United States for roosting purposes.
So you see that Mr. Bush has started a war and he clearly has no idea of how to finish it. John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, promises us that the war will go on until the year 2013. That would make the Iraqi war of at least ten years in duration. During that time, it is clear that many other chickens will be sent home to roost in this country.
I am quite aware that increased demand has driven up the price of oil. But those increased demands have always been taken care of in the past. The thing that is different in this case is that we have sent our crusaders to subdue Iraq and, to the Arab mind, to subdue Islam. Much of the rest of the world is angry with this war in Iraq. No one really wishes us well.
Under the Bush administration, this country is no longer feared, nor is it respected or admired. The fact that this administration has engaged in torture is another reason to send chickens to this country to roost. And so I am forced to the conclusion that the chickens that are coming home to roost are products of the misadventure in Iraq, a war with unintended consequences. We now know that the consequences of that war may well result in the bankruptcy of this country.
And so at this point let us turn from chickens coming home to roost and proceed to skinning cats. The phrase “skinning cats” is a metaphorical one and I know of no one who has ever really skinned a cat. The phrase “skinning cats” merely means that there is more than one way to get the job done. For example, if I cannot get from this house to New York City by car, I will take a train. When it comes to crossing the Hudson River, I might take a ferry or I might skin a cat by taking the Hudson tubes. The point is that there is more than one way to get the desired result.
When we set out to invade Iraq, the Iraqi Army was no match for the forces of the United States Army or its Air Force. Within a matter of a few days, the Americans were knocking on the doors of Baghdad. But those Iraqis who regarded us as occupiers did not intend to engage our army in a symmetric game of warfare. They resorted to an insurgency which has kept our forces hung up for more than five years. If John McCain has his way, the blood of Americans and Iraqis will be spilled for at least five more years. But while the Iraqis could not defeat us in this asymmetric war, they and the other Islamic nations had another card to play. The other card had to do with accommodating the world’s desire for greatly increased amounts of oil.
The Indians and the Chinese are now competing for the oil that can be produced and we find ourselves paying a highly inflated price. The cost of a barrel of oil is increasing by about four dollars per day and, if my memory is correct, it was well into $130 per barrel this morning. And remember, please, that the Iraqis have a strangle hold on much of the world’s oil. So if they cannot kill all of our soldiers in Baghdad, they can retaliate by making it very uncomfortable for the American oppressors when they fill their gas tanks or when they go to the grocery store.
It is my belief that, within a short time, we will soon be paying five dollars per gallon for gasoline and we will remember four dollars per gallon with fond memories. A respected commentator who deals with oil as a business, this morning suggested that the price of a gallon of gas may eventually approach twelve to fifteen dollars. Simply put, when the cost of oil and other commodities reaches a level that is beyond the purchasing power of the American public, there will be an effort to do something about the root cause of this inflationary exercise. The root cause, of course, is the Iraq war. When our legislators and perhaps a new administration in Washington get this message, there will be no choice but to end this conflict as quickly as possible because of the drain on our financial resources. In the end, it is becoming much more clear that the misadventure in Iraq is perhaps the most catastrophic failure since the founding of the American government. This war was brought to you by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, who will soon leave office. When their successors go to straighten out this terrific mess, Bush and Cheney will accuse them of “cutting and running” and denying the American people a great victory if we had only held on for another year or so.
So you see, the people that we set out to subjugate in Iraq have the means of fighting back. It is not necessarily a matter of bullets and bombs but of oil and dollars. Bush and Cheney brought this tragic event to the American people, but with their financial resources they may well be able to avoid its ultimate consequences. The losers will be all of those of us whose net worth is substantially less than one billion dollars.
My first job had to do with selling gasoline at Carl Schroth’s Mobil Gas Station in Clayton, Missouri. Before life is done, I may be back selling $12 gasoline to people like myself who cannot afford it. But, boys and girls, that is what happens when the chickens come home to roost and when there is a cat to be skinned.
E. E. CARR
May 22, 2008
Essay 317
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Commentary: As a concrete prediction this has yet to pan out – John McCain didn’t get elected, oil is back to around $98 per barrel in February 2014, and gas in New Providence costs $3.40. Would this have happened under a McCain presidency? My gut reaction is no, but then again, maybe we’d all be filling up just by dipping gas cans directly into Sarah Palin’s Keystone Pipeline.