With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and troops spread around the world, the Department of Defense is the nation’s biggest oil consumer, burning 395,000 barrels per day — about as much as Greece.
The Air Force is the SUV of the military. Its thirsty planes burn more than half the fuel supply for the entire U.S. military. It’s received $1.5 billion in new relief from Congress for fuel — and last week still had $400 million left on its credit card.
Or put another way, the Empire as a whole-
Is it the fact that the largest economy of the world, which is driven by the military industrial complex and uses 25% of the planets oil, has concluded that only Iran stands in its way to controlling 60% of the globe’s known petrochemical reserves?
It isn’t just about oil, but it’s like…one of the top three motivations dude. When you’re running to stand still, peace is not an option. Junkies with atom bombs, not good.
Ten Percent 
29 July, 2008 at 1:27 am
The Empire grows more thirsty by the day, it may end up dead in the middle of the sandy wastelands trying to reach the magical fountain of power and realizing they ran over 10 of them and drank them dry!
29 July, 2008 at 1:51 am
Poetically put and yes very possible their hubris will leave them thirsty under a pitiless desert sun.
29 July, 2008 at 2:59 am
Poetry you say…..
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of “Spiritus Mundi”
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
29 July, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Oil is a major cause. So is war profiteering. Bush’s militant, Christian fundamentalism plays a role too
29 July, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Rafael- Oh yes, a very fitting bit of Yeats. I like to think among all the contractors there might be a Gyreco- a major backer of War Inc.
GLH- Yep all those, and I’d add imperialism. They all came together in a perfect storm, starting with a right wing judicial coup aided by a sibling’s state control and a father who used to be leader & headed the secret police and army for the empire. That’s how it would have been reported if it had happened in a developing nation!
30 July, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Let`s not forget “the power behind the throne”. (corporate billionaires and the religiously fervent.)
Who were the paymasters and policy writers that have used American and British military power in trying to control the politics and oil reserves of the World.
Was Russia targeted in WW2, and the subsequent “cold war”, because of her political system, or because of the immense reserves of gas and oil?
However, it would seem that the “end of empire” is fast approaching, many predict that by the end of this year, there will be much civil unrest and upheaval in the United States.
Who knows, but if there is such a thing as Karma, then it might be that America is about to face some very loud music.
30 July, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Hey Landsker!
Yes that’s a good historical context, I do remember a very good BBC2 history of oil maybe three parts about 15 or so years ago and it was very noticeable that the history of the last 100 years is tightly allied to oil’s exploitation as fuel. I think the cold war was a very put up job for many reasons and yes capitalists really hate it when they don’t get to own and exploit natural resources. I think that phobia of not being able to own and control was the real emotional core of the cold war that fuelled the West’s ruling elites antagonism.
I don’t know about America, the corporatist state is so powerful and the left so marginalised can a reckoning for the good happen or will a depression lead to fascism? I know an Obama victory will help direct that path, not so much for him or his policies but symbolically for the people who have become engaged because of him, or at least I hope. Their national debt is huge and the party politics are between centre and the extreme right and the police & security apparatus is militarised, the best we can do is support the left there and minimise the influence of the empire in our nations so that doesn’t reinforce the US right, the opposite of what Blair did! The help NuLabour gave the Bush regime was appalling, still is.