A Little Deal

With California gasoline prices boldly surging over $3.00 a gallon, and a barrel of sweet crude trading upwards of $65.00, can the gas crisis be far behind? But no one speaks of that. No one predicts shortages or long lines at the gas pumps. Sure scooter sales are up, but SUVs still dominate the road and consume more than their share of the gasoline supply. They are road hogs in more that one sense.

Yesterday a jaunty school-bus yellow Hummer sped past me on the freeway and it came to me. We could solve our gas problems and enlistment quotas at a swift and simultaneous stroke.

Here's the plan: Let's tell the guy who walks onto the showroom floor shopping for a shiny H2, that he can have a great price anytime he wants as long as he's willing to stop by the recruiter's desk conveniently located in the office. In fact, the ONLY way he is gong to get that boxy sex machine is to FIRST sign on the dotted line with the man in the uniform. If he wants the Hummer, he's gotta do the hitch.

Heck, he can get his wheels right away. He and his H2 can be on their way to streets of Baghdad within a matter of hours.

The plan is sooo beautiful and simple. The Hummer driver is the very one who is patrolling and protecting the very thing he has to have to keep his love alive--oil. He's the guy who's using up the gasoline, and he's the one out there making sure the petrol is in our pumps. Makes sense doesn't it? Who can argue with that? The military meets its quotas; the folks who use the most oil are those taking an active interest in securing it, and GM still sells cars.

America's taste in cars and policy in the Middle East are not one thing and another, they are hand in driving glove. As an English teacher I can read the symbols, and we need look no further than the SUVs clogging up the highways to see why we invaded Iraq. The globe is littered with brutally repressive dictators. Hell, many have been or still are our allies. But these are generally third-world agrarian fiefdoms. What's so vital about the freedom of Iraqis that we should care so deeply?

Let's face it, it's the oil, not the freedom, not the democracy, and certainly not the WMDs that put our boots on their ground. What kind of war are we in, when no general public sacrifice is required to support our efforts. The only sacrifices are those made by the two thousand families whose soldiers have died in a pointless war while the rest of America tools around on the nation's fine highways.

That guy in the yellow H2 could have gotten the same charge with a prescription for Viagra, and I'll bet filling up the gas tank on the HumVee cost about as much as a stop by his local pharmacy.