Our Enemies

I know that a lot of liberals are fond of trying to draw linkages between the need for energy policy reform and national security issues, but I worry when I read things like this from Thomas Friedman:

Yes, Iraq was always going to be hugely difficult, but the potential payoff of erecting a decent, democratizing government in the heart of the Arab world was also enormous. Yet Mr. Bush, in his signature issue, never mobilized the country, never punished incompetence, never made the bad guys “fight all of us,” as Bill Maher put it, by at least pushing through a real energy policy to reduce the resources of the very people we were fighting. He thought he could change the world with 50.1 percent of the country, and he couldn’t.

It's true, obviously, that the government of Saudi Arabia is not run along incredibly admirable lines. Nor is the Al-Sabah family of Kuwait a crew I'm enthusiastic about. And, again, much the same can be said about the regime in Teheran. Nevertheless, none of these are the very people we were fighting unless you think we're just fighting "Muslims" or "Arabs" writ large.

Photo courtesy of ping News