Middle Eastern Oil Fuels Terrorism by Gerald E. Marsh (NAPSA)—Thevast sumsof oil money pouring into the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia in particular, cost us a high price in blood and terrorism. It is no accident that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. They are the source of Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Islam that the Saudis have used their vast wealth to spread far beyond the landofits birth. Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are all funded with Gulf oil money. As Bernard Lewis, an eminent Middle East scholar, put it: From oil the extremist Wahhabi sect found itself in possession of “wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. As a result, what would otherwise have been a lunatic fringe in a marginal country became a major force in the world of Islam.” And it has reached our shores. According to testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, “non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques out of a total ranging between an official estimate of 1,200 and an unofficial figure of 4-6,000 are under Wahhabicontrol.” “the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the socalled Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIR), has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques.” These mosques, often built with Saudi money, come with strings attached: Wahhabi teachers and books. The books form the basis for a curriculum of intolerance, including heavy doses of anti-Christian and anti-Semitic rant. They are found throughout the U.S. in Islamic schools. Open andfree societies like the U.S. must not only condemn this type of intolerance and promote integration of all immigrants—as opposed to the failed European model of multiculturalism—they must also minimize the flow ofoil money to the Middle East. We must decrease our dependence on oil from the Middle East. This is not easy, because much of the world’s easily accessible oil is found there. But there are two things we can do immediately. With environmental risks far less than in the past, the federal government should swiftly open areas of the Gulf of Mexico to exploration and drilling. One deep water well is now producing some 6,000 barrels of crude per day from a 300-mile-wide field estimated to contain up to 15 billion barrels—a 50 percent increase in current U.S. reserves. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is another important source of domestic energy @ with extractable reserves projected to equal as much as 30 years’ of oil imports from Saudi Arabia. It is oil that can be brought into production quickly using conventional technology. While the amountof oil from both sources is not large in terms of total U.S. consumption, it is enough to provide greater control of prices during the time the world needs to depend on Middle Easternoil. In the longer term, America has a number of options for liquid fuels, including enormous reserves of shale oil in four Western states. But development of those options, and recovery of shale oil in an environmentally sound manner, will take many years to ramp up to the vast quantities needed. We need to get started immediately. While the House of Representatives has passed several bills to open the Outer Continental Shelf and ANWRtooil and gas exploration and production, the Senate has thus far refused to do its part. It is time senators took into account the real price ofoil. Physicist Gerald E. Marsh was with Argonne National Laboratory and served as consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology and policy during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. Readers may e-mail him at gemarsh2005-opeds@yahoo.com.
