We are us much to blame as anyone for inching toward conflict. We are not broad thinkers as a culture. Even as our automotive sector is contracting, for example, it parades a new product line dependent on sexy v-8′s rather than efficiency and utility. We’ve had years to access the situation and adjust policy to make us less dependent on oil. Nobody understands the realities better than the current administration, but they have not promoted innovation. The money invested in war could have helped us adapt and reinvent our infrastructure at home instead. But we’ve been unable to identify a replacement that assures sustained economic growth. The current administration has committed us to a course of oil dependence in a contracting market and that means increased conflict. Our choice.

Even if it is hard to see, our collective sense of entitlement to cheap energy and economic growth comes at some expense to other nations. The religious aspects of the cultures can be counted on to polarize viewpoints further on both sides. We seem to be getting more extreme here on our own shores already. Its all very complex and their are lots of nasty personalities involved, but let’s try not lose site of our own rigid mindset and resulting complicity.