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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
If the west hadn't grown so reliant on oil industry resource acquisition, maybe alternate energy industries could have flourished here at the expense of foreign resources, oil in particular.
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This is a common misconception - that all oil comes from the Middle East. This is not true. We have this concept that all oil comes from the Middle East, but that's only because that's all the Middle East has as an export. Russia is the world's largest producer of oil, and the United States is third. So the US produces a vast amount of oil, and the top two exporters to the US are Canada and Mexico.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MediaGuy
The problem with US Foreign Policy is that it doesn't just want to be one of the players - it wants to dominate - to BE - the game board.
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Since WWII, the US has been overly concerned with oil production and rightfully so. One of the reasons Germany and Japan were defeated were because of their lack of oil production, Germany by land and Japan by cutting off ocean shipments. While we will always depend on Middle Eastern oil to a point, this has become less and less. We no longer buy oil from Iran and we do not have any gas shortages here in the US.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
Also - regarding your statement about the US interest in Afghanistan's opium production: from Air America to Iran/Contra, to the Pablo Escobar consolidation in South America brought about by the CIA, and other such trafficking connivances of the special branches, can you really laugh off the possibility (granted it's undocumented yet) that certain levels of US foreign operations has an interest in the opium trade on an under-the-radar level?
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This is not the general policy of the US government or even any department, but instead rouge operatives financing their case of the moment.
We've invaded Afghanistan, have we taken over the Opium market? No, of course not.