It?s time to let the dogs out! Let?s take a lesson from our own history ?how Reagan won the Cold War. Essentially, it was an economic victory as opposed to a military or ideological victory. We ran the Soviet economic engine into the ground.

Now, we are faced with a myriad of enemies whose sole source of economic and political power is that they happen to live above huge oil reserves. The Soviets had technology, military might, a solid manufacturing infrastructure, abundant resource and a wellspring of intellectual capabilities that rivaled and in some areas exceeded our own, but the configuration of their economic engine doomed them to failure against a Capitalist machine ? it inherently just could not compete in a flat-out competition. Reagan proved this to them and, seeing the light of reason, they backed down to avoid all-out disaster.

Our current crop of enemies have far less to work with ?, their infrastructure, their military capabilities, their ability to cling to power are all dependent on one simple factor ? their control of vast oil reserves. So it would seem obvious even to the casual student of history that this one source of power and control is also their Achilles Heel. If we are to prevail and defeat them, this is where they are most vulnerable.

Traditionally, they have wielded power on the international stage by controlling the supply of oil as we (the West) have come to them ?hat in hand? with gifts of technology, food, infrastructure projects, cash, ? you name it, in order to ?persuade? them to keep the pumps open. As anyone who drives a car can see, this philosophy is about to explode in our faces ? unless we react quickly. How do we accomplish this?

It seems that the obvious and easiest way to attack the source of our enemy?s is, simply, to flood the world marketplace with oil and other energy sources!!! The United States alone (not even counting the vast resources of western countries like Canada) sits on top of HUGE sources of energy ? billions and billions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, billions of tons of coal ? unknown billions of barrels of off-shore oil ? According to the mean average estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey, there are at least 10.3 billion barrels of oil in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Most of this oil can be tapped through a drilling imprint of just 2,000 acres, or .01%, of the reserve area. In addition, there is an estimated 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in ANWR alone. yet for a variety of reasons, we have not taken advantage of this ? political reasons disguised as ?concerns? for the environment have obscured the real challenges with which we have to deal with. IT?S TIME TO LET THE DOGS OUT!!!.

What does that mean??? Let?s let the energy companies loose ? let?s help them, subsidize them, partner with them, support the quest for cheap oil sources, help them realize huge profits and tax them, let?s take off the gloves ? LET?S FLOOD THE WORLD MARKETS WITH OIL AND OTHER ENERGY SOURCES ? let?s break our Middle East enemy?s economically by taking away the one advantage they have!!!! Let?s make their oil worth a fraction of what is worth today to the point where it is they who must come to us ?hat in hand?.

A ?small? peripheral benefit would be, through increased taxes on what would be vast profits and government/industry partnerships, would be to reduce or perhaps even eliminate our national debt! Another lesson from history can be seen from the ?Dot Com? era. Did the vast surpluses of money that flowed into our government coffers in the 90?s come from Bill Clinton?s economic brilliance, or was it the natural result of taxes being levied on vast new sources of income? Does anyone remember how low unemployment was during that time as well?

It seems that letting the ?energy dogs? loose might just prove to be our onlysalvation.