12 thoughts on “Selling Out To Our Enemies”

  1. Qatar’s oil exports have tripled since 1970, Zubrin has always been a colorful character, on this issue he’s just a flake.
    The bottleneck in OPEC production today is geological, oil fields get depleted, production from a given well always declines over time, OPEC (and everyone else) is drilling at capacity these days with no exploration rigs idle, this is also the case with the US, Zubrin’s “production without EPA” line is just crap.

  2. Gore has proven, yet again, that he is as he’s always been – a self-serving hypocrite. He’s loyal to one cause and one cause alone: Al Gore.

  3. I think that before we accuse someone of “selling out to our enemies”, we need to figure out who our enemies are. Qatar maintains generally friendly political ties with the United States, hosts the U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters in the region, engages in billions of dollars of mutually beneficial trade each year, and doesn’t sell us as much oil as Robert Zubrin thinks it should.

    Robert Zubrin may believe that the entire Arab world is our enemy. I think that assessment is premature, and if we have any friends left in that part of the world, it would be hard not to count Qatar among them. So, of all the things we might criticize Al Gore for, I think I’ll take a pass on this one.

    1. As Arab nations go, there are certainly far worse than Qatar, but any member of OPEC is generally intrinsically aligned against us economically. But I’ll admit that his father’s dalliances with Hammer and the Soviets were worse.

      I just find it amusing that the supposedly green Gore considers a propaganda outfit for oil-despots more aligned with his value system than Glenn Beck.

      1. From Wiki:
        Commercial ties between the United States and Qatar have been expanding at a rapid pace over the last five years, with trade volumes growing by more than 340%, from $738 million in 2003 to $3.2 billion in 2009. Over the same period, U.S. exports increased by 580% to $2.7 billion, making the United States the largest import partner for Qatar. U.S. companies look to play key role in the $60 billion dollars that Qatar will invest in roads, infrastructure development, housing and real estate, health/medical and sanitation projects in the next decade.

        “but any member of OPEC is generally intrinsically aligned against us economically.”

        Like saying the US is “intrinsically aligned” against any number of countries because of its protectionist trade policies. ie, a load of bollocks.

      2. “but any member of OPEC is generally intrinsically aligned against us economically”

        As with anyone else we trade with, OPEC is “intrinsically aligned against us” in that they want to be expensive things that we want to be cheap, and vice versa. I am unconvinced of the utility of a definition that equates “enemy” with “trade partner”.

      3. The way al-Jazeera is “aligned” with Al Gore’s values is simply this: both Gore and OPEC want us to waste our energy-independence efforts on “green energy” dead ends. Their reasons may actually be different, but the means are precisely aligned.

    2. Kind of sucks that our best friends in the region don’t have much in common with us. It makes it hard to determine who our enemies are and leads to a foreign policy that throws Mubarak under the bus while propping up a horrible government in Yemen and other schizophrenic nonsense.

      It also makes it hard for our “friends” to determine where we stand. Will we invade a country because of the presence of Islamic militants or will we train, fund, and arm Islamic militants to overthrow governments? Do we not go to war when sanctions fail and go to war when they work? (Iran/Libya)

      We are encouraging Islamist militant groups in Libya but also helping France fight those same groups in Mali.

      I don’t buy Zubrin’s graph but he makes a good point that Gore has been successful in hindering oil production in our country to the benefit of the rest of oil the oil producing world. Intentional on Gore’s part? Certainly not. Gore wasn’t working as their agent. But siding with our enemies? I am not sure how you could frame the sale to AJ as anything else.

  4. What a load of bollocks. Like the Bush family has no ties to the Qatar elite, or that the Carlyle Group has no interest in Qatar. And the NRO article describes it as a “payoff” when it is in fact just a selling of assets — that’s called capitalism for those not driven by ideology.

Comments are closed.