Q. I see that you deliberately chose not to tell the audience that Cheney and Bush are oil executives. Do you know anything about the oil in Afghanistan? Or why we are really in Saudi Arabia?
A. I know about as much about the oil in Afghanistan as I do about all the purported oil that was "really" in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. If our government has cozied up to corrupt oil producers like the sheiks in the Gulf, it was not to give Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney impressive stock portfolios, but more to provide cheap electricity and gas for the likes of you and me. A principled position of disengagement from the Middle East would require you, in a significant way, to extricate from our current electronic-guzzling world � laptops, SUVs, plane tickets, and vacations abroad � or to support coastal drilling off Santa Barbara and in the Arctic Circle, or to explain how hydrogen, solar rays, strong breezes, or batteries can power our cars, power plants, and aircraft this year. If our policy was solely designed to protect cheap oil, then we would not be responding in the Middle East at all � as, in fact, a number of isolationists and oilmen have cautioned.