Energy and Terror

Thomas Friedman hits one out of the park:

“If we had imposed a new gasoline tax after 9/11, demand would have been dampened and gas today would probably still be $2 a gallon. But instead of the extra dollar going to Saudi Arabia - where it ends up with mullahs who build madrasas that preach intolerance - that dollar would have gone to our own Treasury to pay down our own deficit and finance our own schools.”

The flood of oil money, he goes on, buoys up despots in the Middle East and drowns reform.

“Phil Verleger, one of the nation's top energy consultants and a longtime advocate of a gas tax, puts it succinctly: 'U.S. energy policy today is in support of terrorism - not the war on terrorism.'”