Pages

Monday, June 4, 2012

Drilling in Afghanistan: Republicans and Democrats must move beyond their outdated mottos, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror
Drilling in Afghanistan: Republicans and Democrats must move beyond their outdated mottos
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New York Times
Published: July 30, 2008

Anyone who looks at the growth of middle classes around the world and their rising demands for natural resources, plus the dangers of climate change driven by our addiction to fossil fuels, can see that clean renewable energy — wind, solar, nuclear and stuff we haven’t yet invented — is going to be the next great global industry. It has to be if we are going to grow in a stable way.

Therefore, the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough — the E.T. revolution, the energy technology revolution — and create millions of jobs and thousands of new businesses, just like the I.T. revolution did.

Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters — and forget about these things called the “PC” and “the Internet.” It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.

But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”

http://newageislam.com/drilling-in-afghanistan--republicans-and-democrats-must-move-beyond-their-outdated-mottos/war-on-terror/d/369


0 comments: