Now That We’ve Killed Osama Bin Laden, Let’s Kill Oil - TheGrist

[WillyT]

Now that we’ve killed Osama bin Laden, let’s kill oil
BY GLENN HUROWITZ - TheGrist
2 MAY 2011 2:44 AM

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The U.S. military's killing of Osama bin Laden is a huge victory in the war against terror and on behalf of a safer, freer world. But if this is to be the beginning of the end for al Qaeda and repressive governments everywhere, we have to make it our national mission not just to hunt down terrorist leaders, but also to wipe out the single greatest source of their money and power: oil.

From the beginning, Osama bin Laden's rise was made possible by oil money. He acquired the millions of dollars that allowed him to start and finance al Qaeda from his huge family construction business, which literally paved the way for Saudi Arabia's massive oil boom. Al Qaeda continues to receive tens of millions of dollars from oil-rich sympathizers in the Gulf. But they're hardly alone in feeding their brutality with oil.

Libya's Muammar Gadaffi is able to hang on against an intense NATO campaign largely because of the billions of dollars in oil money he's stockpiled to pay African mercenaries and buy off potential opponents. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has financed Hezbollah and Hamas and poured billions into a nuclear weapons program with profits from Iran's huge oil deposits. Further down on the repression scale, Bahrain's royal family has imported Saudi troops to crush the country's democratic reform movement, while Vladimir Putin is able to resist calls for openness and economic innovation because of the flood of oil dollars entering his country.

In contrast, Tunisia and Egypt's relative lack of oil meant that their governments didn't have the same level of resources to maintain the support of loyalists or try to temporarily buy off their people.

Indeed, not only does oil finance terror and repression, it enables it. According to an extraordinary statistical analysis by UCLA political scientist Michael Ross, a country's "reliance on either oil or mineral exports tends to make it less democratic," and "this effect is not caused by other types of primary exports; ... it is not limited to the Arabian Peninsula, to the Middle East, or sub-Saharan Africa; and ... it is not limited to small states."

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More: http://www.grist.org/oil/2011-05-02-now-that-weve-killed-bin-laden-lets-kill-oil

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