Now, thirty-four years later, we are suffering through a second oil shock, again caused by OPEC – the cartel’s goals are to keep petroleum prices high and increase the power of its members – as well as by rising global demand. Oil prices have doubled in the past year and quadrupled in the past six. As energy researcher Gal Luft has pointed out, the consequence is a historic transfer of wealth “to the coffers of a small group of oil-producing nations, most of them authoritarian and unfriendly to the West.”
In recent congressional testimony, Luft noted, too, that should oil reach $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy the Bank of America in one month’s worth of production, Apple Computer in a week and General Motors in just three days.” A 20 percent share of every S&P 500 company could be theirs in just 18 months.
Foreign ownership is not necessarily bad. But acquisition by private investors is one thing; ownership by “sovereign wealth funds” controlled by despots hostile to America is another. We would not allow the U.S. government to buy Citicorp or Fox News. By what possible reasoning should we be more welcoming of Islamist regimes – in many cases the same regimes that deployed what they called the “oil weapon” against us just three decades ago?
If we understand that we are fighting a war, we also should understand this: There is no precedent for winning a war while lavishly funding one’s enemies.
And speaking of those enemies, imagine a Gulf sheik sympathetic to Osama bin Laden’s goals but uncomfortable with his methods. He might say to the terrorist master: “Why blow up buildings we can purchase – with the infidels themselves providing the money in return for a few drops of the oil that Allah, in His infinite wisdom, has placed beneath our desert sands for just this purpose?”