The Ailing US Leadership

As if it is not already enough of a show to that oil executives were summoned to be grilled, the House, in another act that defies logics and rationality, voted 324 to 84 to pass a legislation, commonly referred to as Nopec, to sue OPEC as a monopoly for price gouging under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The five oil titans, shown left to right in the photo, BP America Chairman Robert Malone, Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, Chevron Vice Chairman Peter Robertson, ConocoPhillips Executive Vice President John Lowe and ExxonMobil Senior Vice President J. Stephen Simon, showed their own grit by firing back that government intervention can only make the matter worse, and took the opportunity to press on Congress to allow more domestic drilling, such as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

There is no shortage of commentaries and editorials labeling the latest acts as "hypocrisy", "idiocy" and other descriptive nouns. It is of wonder to anyone what the House think they may be fooling with this asinine song and dance with the big oil executives, and why they would even think they have the policing authority to subject a world organization operating on non-US land to American justice for not giving the entitled cheap gas to the US motorists to fill up their SUVs. Ironically, US champions the cause of free market.

The arrogance is nowhere near as embarrassing as the stupidity and the ignorance. Our leaders should look at themselves in the mirror, and really understand who are most deserving to be on the stand.

But maybe, there is another explanation better reflects the political reality and closer to the mind of the 324 representatives.

That is, our leaders have become impotent to effect any more changes. NOTHING, other than to put on the only show they know how, point the fingers, and sing to us voters how they are still the people-caring powerful leaders with the same clout as ever to subject the rest of the world into submission.

This is after years of military operations in Iraq costing taxpayers trillions, as well as the reputation and the moral leadership of the US for the rest of the world, in our fooled-on-one plan to go after the world third largest oil reserve.

During a Democratic debate, Barrack Obama responded to John Edward and Hillary Clinton's criticism of human rights issues of other nations with the rebuttal "US has lost its moral leadership."

Policymakers have exhibited even poorer leadership domestically, examplified by a failing system in the aftermath of Katrina, and for turning a blind eye to a housing bubble and Wall Street's ethic-less profit-frenzy that escalated into an economic disaster of historic proportion. In a continuation of this foul leadership, the policymakers opted to awash the system with more easy-money hoping to stabilize the system in the form of even more easy capital and government bailouts, thus transferred the burden to middle class consumers once again with inflation and expectedly higher taxes that will eventually come. The middle class just became a little smaller and its burden just grew a little heavier. In stark contrast those ultra-rich involved in the reckless greed escaped one more round of a much needed and deserved financial punishment.

They are still citing the natural market cycle and expressing the same confidence in the strong US economy to recover. Yet something underneath is clearly rotting away. Even when the oil under the Iraqi sand starts to flow in the westward direction to save the US economy back to even greater glory, our leadership has already become a lost art for far too many years. The transparent strong-arming oil-dependent regime does not bode well with basic human spirit, and it is a false belief that a strong economy can sustain without trust. They are failing to understand that leadership more and more.

The policies which now intertwine nearly exclusively the national security and military operations to oil have created misguided priority. Sadly but truthfully, the US is providing more convincing support to the testimony that history repeats, and that US is no more different in its use of power and politics than any other once-strong superpowers throughout history.

The 2008 Presidential Election will show the choice of the American people for which direction US should take at this crossroad.