And I Think We Know What The Other Shoe Is...

A few days ago, I posted the following:

Get The Feeling Yet Another Shoe Is About To Drop?

[....]Give Qaeda credit: they're a damn sight more persistent than the Bush administration has been. They've set an eye on a target, like the Trade Center, and have carefully chosen their plan, while we've rushed willy-nilly, sending boys and girls into harm's way only to change the target and focus of our activities. Al Qaeda does what they say they'll do: the Bush administration has to find post facto excuses.

Yesterday, comes this:

The guidelines in al Qaeda's war against "crusaders" and U.S.-allied governments were laid out in a manifesto written by Abdulaziz al-Enezi, arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2005 and described by the Saudis as a prominent ideologue of al Qaeda.

In the manifesto, which was recently posted on an Islamist Web site, Enezi said disrupting oil supplies was the best way to hurt the U.S. economy and destabilize the Saudi royal family.

The document said Saudi state-owned refineries and oil pipelines and Iraqi facilities were "all in the hands of infidels."

"It is permissible to target oil interests held by infidels ... including American and Western oil tankers," Enezi said.

Which makes the concerted attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines not just the insurgency's way of ensuring instability in Iraq, but Al Qaeda's sworn goal. By hitting the pipelines, they prevent oil from boosting the Iraqi economy.

See, oil is more than a commodity for our use. It's a tool used by despots around the world to keep a stranglehold on power. When a country has oil, its stability is threatened until a tyrant, monarch (or oligarchy, as is the case in Iran) seizes power. We've seen it in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq (and will see it again there), even traditional democracies like Venezuela are in deep unrest until a forceful figure wrests control of the government, like Chavez has.

And yes, even in America.

Iraq, indeed, the Middle East, will never sustain a working democracy of the kind we want to see until and unless another way of fueling cars and powering machinery can be found. Period. Poor countries with no resources don't have civil wars. Poor countries WITH resources do.

Bush
oil
Iraq
Iran