'Stunningly Shameful'
CONTINETTI, MATTHEW
EDITORIALS ‘Stunningly Shameful’ On January 23, 2008, during her keynote speech at the glitzy World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Condoleezza Rice made a surprisingly friendly...
...Last week House Democrats tried to pass a “use it or lose it” law that would have denied federal land leases to oil companies if the companies couldn’t demonstrate that they were producing energy on existing plots...
...And a few days after that, it rejected a generous aid offer from our European allies—backed by the State Department— that included nuclear fuel, assistance on a nuclear reactor, and improved trade and diplomatic relations, if the Iranian regime would simply suspend its uranium enrichment program...
...And a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice said: “This is stunningly shameful...
...The thinking here is that commodities traders have a fi nancial interest in watching prices go up...
...In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD in May, she reiterated this point...
...Meanwhile, New York senator Charles Schumer demanded that other oil-producing nations increase production in order to lower U.S...
...First they ignored the problem altogether...
...Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei understands that aggressive rhetoric is effective...
...In the weeks leading up to the State Department’s announcement, Iran had been deliberately provocative...
...The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable...
...One day earlier the permanent members of the U.N...
...He rejected North Korean requests for direct meetings...
...Exploring deposits on the continental shelf “wouldn’t produce a drop of oil for seven years or longer,” wrote Senator Dianne Feinstein...
...So we’re ready, with our partners, to engage directly with Iran on that basis...
...That is because the number is a joke...
...So what changed...
...negotiator Christopher Hill secretly met alone with his North Korean counterpart in China...
...Boehner has asked Speaker Pelosi where this unsubstantiated statistic comes from...
...interests section in Tehran...
...No one pretends that drilling will solve all our problems overnight...
...The Iranian nation will cut the hand which is raised against the dear Islamic Republic...
...For a long while, Democrats simply blamed the oil companies for the spike in gasoline prices...
...The price of oil didn’t drop...
...They have slowly changed positions as the absurdity of their arguments has become clear...
...He declined to talk about internal State Department deliberations but reported that such a move—one that would bring the United States one step closer to the “more normal relationship” Condoleezza Rice promised back in January without any indication that Iran intends to stop or even slow its pursuit of nuclear weapons—is under active consideration...
...offi cial for direct meetings with a terrorist-friendly regime, Mahmoud Ahmad inejad predicted that the United States would acquiesce...
...Despite all of this—despite North Korean nuclear aid to one of the world’s leading terrorist regimes and despite its subsequent failure to account for its nuclear programs—in June the Bush administration volunteered to lift sanctions on North Korea under the Trading with the Enemy Act and, over the objection of our close ally Japan, decided to remove North Korea from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terror...
...For another, the bill was premised on the idea that 4.8 million barrels of oil a day could be extracted from these “unused” lands...
...On October 9, 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon...
...To get there again requires favoring the national interest over the parochial interests of environmentalists...
...But if we had drilled ten years ago, wouldn’t those supplies be on the market today...
...Finally, Democrats are attacking the pro-drilling folks for thinking ahead...
...Democrats are losing the fi ght over gas prices, and they know it, too...
...At a Kuala Lumpur summit for developing nations, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned of George W. Bush’s “satanic desires...
...Matthew Continetti, for the Editors...
...For one, there is already a “use it or lose it” provision in federal law...
...And bend they did...
...They know that they cannot use the language of force against Iran,” he said, “and must bend in the face of the will of the Iranian people...
...Well, some do...
...The next morning George W. Bush condemned this “provocative act” and warned against proliferation...
...Iran test-fi red long-range missiles, including the Shahab-3, which is capable of striking Israel...
...It will send a signal that we are taking action, that we are not helpless...
...The Security Council had approved similar measures twice in the previous 13 months, and this third round of sanctions, Rice said, was necessary because of “Iran’s unwillingness to suspend its enrichment and reprocessing of uranium...
...No excuses...
...It has been a dispiriting few weeks...
...Stephen F. Hayes, for the Editors Over to You, Speaker Pelosi Gas is still at $4 a gallon, but the good news is there’s an emerging consensus on a measure that would help: Drill for more oil here at home...
...Another suggested that whatever credit the Bush administration deserved for keeping Americans safe in the seven years after 9/11 would be offset by the blame the administration will have earned for emboldening America’s enemies with its refl exive weakness...
...In his appearance on Capitol Hill, Burns was asked about reports that the United States is considering opening a U.S...
...But they refused to acknowledge that one of the best ways to increase supply is to expand America’s production capacity by opening new territory to exploration...
...Are we dependents...
...When ignorance and fi nger-pointing didn’t work, Democrats dusted off the law of supply and demand...
...There was one condition...
...She said, in this fi nal year of the Bush administration, Iran and the United States could move towards a “new, more normal relationship...
...Bush has stopped new shipments to the reserve, increasing supply on the (microscopic) margins...
...But, it’s not just Iran...
...The 25-year boom of the 1980s and 1990s coincided with, and to an extent depended on, an era of cheap and plentiful energy...
...Then the Democrats—and, to their discredit, plenty of Republicans—decided to scapegoat “speculators...
...It’s time to drill...
...But why rely on the Saudis...
...Three weeks later, chief U.S...
...Instead, Condoleezza Rice directed her diplomats to simply drop the one precondition for engagement that we had insisted on for years and in effect reward these provocations...
...This year, the bets on higher oil prices have been good because the falling dollar, rising global demand, and political instability in the Middle East and Africa are driving the price of this particular commodity upward...
...Recall, instead, that Feinstein and Gore are simply echoing what critics say every time the drilling issue arises...
...We will negotiate with them if they suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activities and start down a different road...
...Maybe so...
...They even threatened to sue OPEC...
...Rather, they demanded that Bush release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, forgetting that the reserve is called “strategic” for a reason...
...Nobel laureate Al Gore said last week, “It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now...
...There are those who say that the American president would do something in his fi nal months of presidency...
...Okay, then...
...Without any indication that Iran was suspending its uranium enrichment program, the State Department announced that Burns would be heading to Switzerland for direct meetings with Iran’s nuclear negotiators...
...Whether it is twenty or ten years ago or today, the answer is always, “You won’t see anything for ten years...
...Several conservative political appointees have said that they are embarrassed to be working in the Bush administration...
...Congress has its own ban on offshore energy exploration, and the Democrats who run Congress have shown no sign that they are willing to follow Bush’s example...
...The bill was rejected, and for good reasons...
...The “speculators” just make bets on where the price of a commodity will be by a certain date...
...Earlier this summer, Senate Democrats wasted time debating a carbon cap-and-trade scheme that would have raised energy prices dramatically at a time when those prices were already at record highs...
...But the condition is that no one threatens the Iranian nation,” he said last week, according to a translation published on NationalReviewOnline...
...It isn’t working...
...They have preferred to make excuses—about why the price of oil is rising, who is to blame for its rise, and why increasing domestic supply won’t do anything to ameliorate the problem...
...gas prices...
...The Democrats’ next tack was to suggest that the oil companies are sitting on millions of acres of oil and not doing anything about it...
...Two weeks before the Bush administration announced it would be crossing the fi nal red line in diplomacy with Iran, and sending a senior U.S...
...The positions of the Islamic Republic and the red lines of the Iranian nation are very clear and if the parties of negotiation negotiate within this framework, the authorities will engage in dialogue...
...Why not take steps to increase our own supply...
...Security Council had agreed in principle to new sanctions in the face of continued Iranian intransigence on its nuclear weapons program...
...T]he Iranian nation will punish him, even if he is out of offi ce and no longer has any offi cial responsibility...
...Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that no one is saying drilling is a short-term answer to the long-term energy challenge...
...Eight months later Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear facility that had been constructed with North Korean assistance...
...In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in mid-July, Undersecretary of State William Burns affi rmed the Bush administration’s unequivocal position...
...EDITORIALS ‘Stunningly Shameful’ On January 23, 2008, during her keynote speech at the glitzy World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Condoleezza Rice made a surprisingly friendly gesture to the Iranian regime...
...Obviously, I made the decision that bilateral negotiations wouldn’t work, and the reason I made that decision is because they didn’t...
...What we’ve made clear, along with the P-5 plus one partners, our willingness to negotiate directly with Iran about the nuclear issue, and that’s laid out now in three Security Council resolutions...
...The State Department response wasn’t to get tough...
...The fact that there are traders of oil futures has nothing to do with why those prices increase...
...Should Iran suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities—which is an international demand, not just an American one—then we could begin negotiations, and we could work over time to build a new, more normal relationship...
...Very little...
...They proposed new windfall profi ts taxes on “Big Oil,” which would of course be passed on to the consumer, making gasoline even more expensive...
...Polls show more than two-thirds of the public support increased domestic energy exploration and production...
...It’s meant to be used in a national emergency...
...Three months after that, they met again in Berlin...
...But, our diplomats were not fi nished...
...Guess who stands in the way...
...If only the Saudis “produced half a million barrels more oil a day,” Schumer said, “the price would come down a very signifi cant amount...
...Cap and trade crashed and burned...
...Others —those betting prices will fall—do not...
...One called the new policies “preemptive capitulation...
...President Bush dropped the executive ban on offshore oil and natural gas exploration last week, and House GOP leader John Boehner plans to lead a congressional delegation to Colorado and Alaska to highlight America’s abundant energy resources this week...
...She hasn’t said...
...It’s premised on Iran’s meeting its international obligation to suspend enrichment and reprocessing...
...Nonstarters all...
...But last week the Bush administration abruptly refi ned that position—as Barack Obama might put it...
...The Iranians have certainly been paying attention to this kinder, gentler Bush administration and its sudden embrace of the thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another school of diplomacy...
...But it will send a powerful signal to the markets that America is serious about energy and the global economy...
Vol. 13 • July 2008 • No. 43
