"It's the oil, stupid!"

It's wonderful to have Rep. Murtha stand up and state the obvious (we HAVE to get out of Iraq), but there is another obvious truth which needs to be on the table, and no one seems to be willing to state that. Jim Kunstler puts it out here:

America is leading the current crusade because we are the society most desperately addicted to oil, and the Middle East is where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies. The one thing that we apparently cannot bring ourselves to talk about is our addiction itself. The commuters whizzing around the edge cities and metroplexes of this land probably got a big charge out of Congressman Murtha's anti-war blast taking over drive-time radio on Friday. I wonder if they thought about how it might affect their commuting.

This whole spectacle -- both the inept war itself and our debate about it here at home -- is particularly shameful for the official opposition, my party, the Democrats, because we could be talking about the so-called elephant-in-the-room, namely how we live in America and the tragic choices we've made, and the things we might do to change that -- but the party leadership is too brain-dead or craven to do that. As long as we don't, we're going to be wrassling a tarbaby in the Middle East.

Oh, yeah; it's the oil, stupid! We need to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence on the oil which if we are going to extricate ourselves from the quagmire that is the Middle East. And if that is going to happen, we are going to have to start talking about it NOW (since yesterday is not an option.)