The current line coming from the Bush administration is that we must stay in Iraq because if we do not, radical Muslims will establish a new caliphate with Sharia as its rule of law stretching from Spain to Pakistan.

Doubtless, radical Muslims do want that.

Whether there are enough of them to accomplish it, and whether they have the means to do so, is another question altogether. With careful long-term planning, a mere handful of them were able to pull off the 9/11 attacks. But being able to plan and pull off the overthrow of dozens of countries which, though mainly Muslim, value their sovereignty, and don’t want Sharia as their rule of law, is a far taller order.

Irrespective of those questions, how would radical Muslims fund their efforts? Through oil wealth.

What can the U.S. do to cut off that wealth? Announce an immediate plan to begin converting our country away from fossil fuels. The supplies world-wide are projected to be completely depleted within ten to twenty years. Norway, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, but not a member of OPEC, is already putting a goodly percentage of its oil profits into a national account so that when the crude runs out, they aren’t left high and dry. The U.S. under Bush has not yet taken such a wise course vis-à-vis its energy situation.

The whopping sums of money being wasted on the Iraq war could instead be applied to a switch-over from fossil fuels to biodiesel fuels. We are not talking about finding a cure to HIV or cancer; these are existing technologies. And converting to biodiesel, unlike fighting in Iraq, does not cost human lives.

During the conversion period, when we still needed fossil fuels, we could emphasize using supplies from Norway and other European countries including Russia, and North and South America, giving as little of our business as possible to the Arab countries. You can believe that those Arab countries would get busier than they are now, realistically planning for their post-fossil-fuel place in the world, rather than having megalomaniacal fantasies of various sorts. Also, we could mobilize our populace for maximum energy conservation during the change-over period; certainly a better scenario than losing human lives to a war.

Furthermore, we could make illegal the sale of armaments to any Arab or Muslim country by a U.S. producer, and tie our trade agreements with all other countries to their cutting off armament sales to the Arab and Muslim countries. Doing so would decrease the profits that George H.W. Bush makes through the Carlyle Group, but it would be in the national interest.

And were a centralized leadership of the caliphate mob to appear, the U.S. certainly has the bombing capability to take it out.

Why hasn’t George W. Bush been thinking along these lines? The only thing he genuinely cares about is the short-term economic well-being of the Bush family. The war in Iraq promotes that, the outline for a plan I am presenting does also, but to a lesser degree. But which idea allows for saner movement towards the future?