Operation Oil Theft: Month 2, Week 1, Day 4.

Yesterday (20/4/11) it emerged that a British photojournalist, Tim Hetherington and an American photojournalist, Chris Hondros were killed in Misrata while two more journalists were seriously wounded. There are conflicting reports of the circumstances of their deaths with some claiming that they were killed in a Libyan government mortar attack while others claim they were killed by a RPG fired as part of a rebel ambush. Whatever the truth the incident highlights how difficult and dangerous it can be to bring news out of a war zone and brings the number of journalists killed since the start of the Libyan war to six.

Also yesterday the American President, Barack Obama announced that America will be supplying the Libyan rebels with $25million worth of non-lethal equipment made up of US military surplus. Apart from being an attempt to shift the focus of the US budget debate on to the amount of money wasted by the US military this announcement is very worrying because it indicates that Obama has invested so much of his vanity into the success of the Libyan rebels it has blinded him to wider consequences of the conflict.

It has long been known that America's major weakness is it's dependency on foreign oil. This undermines national security and sovereignty by making America subservient to unpleasant and oppressive regimes led by the Saudi Royal Family. Quite apart from the fact that the values of these regimes should be morally abhorrent to anyone who swears allegiance to the Constitution of the United States it also puts American lives at risk. After all Al Qeda were originally set up to overthrow the Saudi Royal Family and only started attacking America because of the support that America gives to Saudi Arabia.

Even to George W Bush the severity of this problem was so apparent that it prompted him to radically change America's energy policy in the later stages of his presidency. This change involved reducing oil consumption by focusing on green technologies and reducing the amount of American oil that was being pumped in order to extend the life of America's oil reserves. This new energy policy was one of Bush's few achievements and was so successful that it was copied by other nations with Britain's new tax on North Sea oil production and Norway's response to it looking a lot like a discreet way to ban off shore drilling. It has however had a dramatic effect on Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states because with western nations reducing their oil production while global demand is increasing their oil reserves are being drained at an alarming rate. Saudi Arabia in particular is said to only have around 70-90 years left before the oil runs out and their Monarchy become just some unpleasant people living in the desert.

As the invites the next week's Royal wedding show the British Monarchy are really good friends with the Monarchs of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States and rely on them for much of their power. So to help them Britain has embarked on this mission to overthrow the Libyan government in order to make sure that Libyan oil is brought onto the global market as soon as possible. This vast amount of new oil on the market will reduce demand from middle eastern oil and allow the Gulf States to extend the life of their oil reserves and increase the length of time that they will be able to hold America and the world to ransom. By exploiting the increase in the oil price created by the conflict and using the BP/Gulf of Mexico oil spill Britain is also trying to reduce America's global power by putting pressure on the US government to restart off shore drilling and doing so shorten the life of America's oil reserves.

So from an American perspective the attempts to overthrow Qaddafi are nothing short of suicidal and I cannot understand how Obama is, in good conscience, going along with them especially as it seems to contradict his own energy policy. It is perhaps appropriate then that all this is happening around the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion because in that story there is at least one good lesson for American President's about the importance of being prepared to lose the battle in order to win the war.

Edited to Add: And I knew at the time of writing that by publishing this on the internet it makes it more difficult for American intelligence to back out of Libya but they're still trying to work out stuff that happened five years ago so there's little chance of them managing to work it out on their own.