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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (149384)	10/27/2004 4:08:26 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

Thanks. I will listen to his interview eventually, but I've heard this before. After spending 10 years consulting in the oil patch, interviewing and working with everyone from accounting folks to vice presidents of exploration and CEO's, I am fortunate to have a pretty good grounding on the oil biz. But that's not what I want to say. Energy independence is not what I suggested. What I said was: The lack of a long term plan to reduce energy dependence is troubling The goal is not energy "independence" but reducing dependence -- and in doing this, the support of the public and enterprise , along with all the ingenuity the USA can muster - yes, I believe a difference - a huge difference - can be made to our current dependent status. It won't be easy, it won't be quick. And I am bothered that no leader is really talking about this. The modern generation (which I belong to at 43 years old) has no real in-bred concept of individual and collective sacrifice. We should all be troubled that there is no 21st century equivalent of last century's "Buy War Bonds" campaign. There really is no spirit of investing in the country (not just the market) for the long term in times of trouble -- we are too caught up with living for the moment, happy with our consumerism. We are too happy to have other people fight our battles -- even if the battle is on the wrong front. We keep on living our lives pretty much as normal while the administration fights a war (wrongly in my view) and don't even recognize the danger of inaction here at home. In short, our society just "expects" the easy life. And our economic system is founded on this expectation. Personally I think its a recipe for ultimate disaster, terrorism or not.