> As Green as a Neocon
> Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses.
> By Robert Bryce
> Posted Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005, at 6:10 AM PT
>
>
>
> President Bush has a simple policy about energy:
> produce more of it. The
> former oilman has packed his administration with
> veterans of the oil and
> coal industries. And for most of the first Bush
> term, his energy policy
> and his foreign policy were joined at the hip. Since
> the Bush
> administration believed that controlling the flow of
> oil from the
> Persian Gulf was critically important to the
> American economy, the
> invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the
> president's energy goals and
> his foreign policy ones.
>
> But a curious transformation is occurring in
> Washington, D.C., a split
> of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the
> leading
> neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war
> are going green. James
> Woolsey, the former director of the Central
> Intelligence Agency and
> staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a
> 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota
> Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order.
> Frank Gaffney, the
> president of the Center for Security Policy and
> another neocon who
> championed the war, has been speaking regularly in
> Washington about fuel
> efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.
>
> The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new
> but not entirely
> surprising. The environmentalists are worried about
> global warming and
> air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both
> members of the Project for
> the New American Century, which began advocating
> military action against
> Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for
> geopolitical reasons,
> not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow
> of American dollars
> to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in
> particular.
> Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a
> source of terrorist
> funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney
> told a conference in
> Washington that America has become dependent on oil
> that is imported
> from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to
> us." This fact, he
> said, makes reducing oil imports "a national
> security imperative."
>
> Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall,
> when they jointly
> backed a proposal put forward by the Institute for
> the Analysis of
> Global Security <http://www.iags.org/> , a
> Washington-based think tank
> that tracks energy and security issues. (Woolsey is
> on the IAGS advisory
> board.) The IAGS plan <http://www.iags.org/safn.pdf>
>  proposes that the
> federal government invest $12 billion to: encourage
> auto makers to build
> more efficient cars and consumers to buy them;
> develop industrial
> facilities to produce plant-based fuels like
> ethanol; and promote fuel
> cells for commercial use. The IAGS plan is keen on
> "plug-in hybrid
> vehicles," which use internal combustion engines in
> conjunction with
> electric motors that are powered by batteries
> charged by current from
> standard electric outlets.
>
> The Natural Resources Defense Council
> <http://www.nrdc.org/>  and the
> American Council on Renewable Energy
> <http://www.acore.org/gov_advisory.html>  (Woolsey
> is on the latter's
> advisory board, too) both endorsed the IAGS plan.
> The environmental
> groups, who have been in the weeds ever since George
> W. Bush moved in at
> 1600 Pennsylvania, are happy for any help they can
> get. "It's a
> wonderful confluence. We agree on the same goals,
> even if it's for
> different reasons," says Deron Lovaas, the NRDC's
> point-man on auto
> issues.
>
> For Woolsey and Gaffney, the fact that energy
> efficiency and
> conservation might help the environment is an
> unintended side benefit.
> They want to weaken the Saudis, the Iranians, and
> the Syrians while also
> strengthening the Israelis. Whether these ends are
> achieved with M-16s
> or hybrid automobiles doesn't seem to matter to
> them.
>
> They aren't the only Iraq hawks who have joined the
> cause. The Hudson
> Institute's Meyrav Wurmser also signed the IAGS
> plan. In 1996, she was
> one of the authors—along with Richard Perle and
> Douglas Feith, of a
> famous strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister
> Benjamin Netanyahu that
> called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and
> military assaults against
> Lebanon and Syria. (Wurmser's married to fellow
> neocon David Wurmser, an
> adviser to Dick Cheney, former AEI fellow, and
> enthusiast for the Iraq
> war.) Clifford May, the president of the Foundation
> for the Defense of
> Democracies, endorsed the IAGS scheme, too. And the
> Committee on the
> Present Danger is about to join the
> Prius-and-ethanol crowd, as well. A
> driving force for America's military buildup since
> the '50s now
> reconstituted as an antiterror group, the CPD will
> issue a paper in the
> next few months endorsing many elements of the IAGS
> plan. CPD members
> include Midge Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Newt
> Gingrich, and Steve
> Forbes, as well as Woolsey and Gaffney.
>
> So far, the neocons are the only ones on the right
> to break with Bush on
> energy policy. They can do this because opposing the
> energy policy
> doesn't cost them anything—either politically or
> economically. The
> neocons come mostly out of academia and government
> so, unlike other
> conservative Republicans, they have few ties to big
> business and no
> significant connections to the energy lobbyists who
> are so influential
> with the White House.
>
> Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the green neocons
> believe they can
> convince Congress and the White House to adopt their
> program. May, the
> head of the Foundation for the Defense of
> Democracies, predicts that
> House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will be "open to
> arguments that we can
> increase and enhance national security for a
> reasonable price." Gaffney
> won't name names, but he too is confident, saying,
> "We continue to enjoy
> access to and friendships with people who are key
> policymakers."
>
> If they can convince Congress and the White House to
> enact meaningful
> legislation on energy efficiency and
> conservation—issues that have been
> marginalized since the Carter administration—then
> perhaps the neocons
> will finally have a success story that they can brag
> about. Better
> still, it won't require the services of the 82nd
> Airborne Division.
>
> Robert Bryce <mailto:[log in to unmask]> , a
> contributing writer at
> the Texas Observer, is the author of Cronies: Oil,
> the Bushes, and the
> Rise of Texas, America's Superstate.
>
> Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112608/
> So I see you have finally found a job in DC
> converting the neocons to
> greenness!!! Good grief what will come next?
> Remember the snow job for
> the inauguration!!
>




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to:
[log in to unmask]