OTHER COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : Marching to Protect a Sweet Deal

Instead of being energy independent, we find ourselves, like so many colonial powers before us, dependent on resources that we have no right to control.

This is not the way President Bush describes the situation; it wouldn’t sound good. Speaking to us on television Thursday, he employed all the World War II language--”aggression,” “appeasement,” “blitzkrieg,” “freedom” and “principle”.

But what we fear is not that aggression will be “rewarded,” but that we and the other oil-consuming nations will have to cough up the reward money.

If this sounds crass, so be it. The real battle in the Mideast today is not between the good guys and the bad. It’s between the consumers--with America being the biggest--and one power-mad producer apparently set on cornering the market.

Want it even blunter? The real reason we have sent our forces into Saudi Arabia is not to protect “principle” but the sweet deal we’ve had with the Kuwaiti and Saudi royal families all these decades. Just as our forebears bought Manhattan from the Native Americans for a few strings of beads, we’ve been able to buy the subterranean wealth of the Persian Gulf by putting jewels on the effete fingers of the Gulf’s royal families.

This, not the consummate evil of one Iraqi bully, not the noble cause of “freedom,” is what this week’s saga is all about. We have a deal with the Saudi Arabian princes. Our servicemen are being sent there to protect that deal.

The only “principle” we’re guarding, if you want to call it that, is monarchy.

Could today’s dangers have been avoided? Yes. A decade ago, an American President pleaded with us to end our reliance on OPEC oil. He preached conservation. He promoted alternative energy sources like solar and wind energy. The country, unfortunately, wasn’t ready to hear the truth.

We will be safe from Persian Gulf fanatics like Saddam Hussein only when we are less dependent as a nation on the Persian Gulf. That’s a tough message. It would be good for us all if President Bush delivered it.