Commentary: The axle of evil

DETROIT - Usually, January in the Motor City means non-stop buzz about the North American International Auto Show. For this city eternally on the rebound - ironically rebounding once again because of the automobile industry that keeps Detroit almost afloat and keeps rural Northern Mexico relatively above water - the Auto Show is a chance to show off and entertain high-rollers from around the world.

The annual project aimed at helping the City of Detroit is currently being rivaled by another project that bears the city's name: The Detroit Project, a political maneuver by columnist and activist Arianna Huffington. The take-no-prisoners Huffington, a Republican until she realized that the compassion of conservatism was merely a focus-grouped catch-phrase, has set her sights on the auto industry, more specifically the axle of evil between auto-makers, terrorism-supporting oil barons from the Middle East and American oil companies.

The Detroit Project is responsible for the batch of anti-SUV advertisements that fiendishly mock the latest batch of anti-drug ads - the ones that pathetically attempt to tie drug use to terrorism. The irony that the current White House would attempt to connect drug use with terrorism, and then work frantically to protect the oil and auto industries from their uncomfortable acquaintances in the Middle East (most notably Saudi Arabia - number one in oil production and number one in financing Middle Eastern terrorists), was too much for Huffington and other like-minded moderates to bear.

The ads primarily target the owners of SUV - a line of automobile so popular that it was recently determined that possibly all members of the Big Three could make greater profits by only making SUVs - if you think gas is expensive now.... The best of the ads shows a man named George gassing-up his all-time four-wheel-drive behemoth, while a young girl's voice narrates the causal chain from buying a car that gets nine miles to the gallon to a donation to Hezbollah.

Taking a page from the White House's book, the ads label the offending SUV buyers as un-American - and you thought that the only way you could be unpatriotic was to want a Democratic Senate! What could make Huffington so angry? The current energy policy is a great place to start.

The current White House, led by a former oil man (Vice President Dick Cheney) and the one man who couldn't find oil in Texas (President George W. Bush failed in an oil business in the 1980s), was responsible for mocking Al Gore in 2000 when he argued that the combustion engine was soon to be a thing of the past and dismissing Gore's proposals for federally financed study into alternative-energy autos as tree-hugger idealism. Instead, the administration offered America an energy plan that called for huge increases in production, coupled with federally financed increases in the number of refineries - the problem is with supply, asserted Cheney, and "conservation is a virtue." Apparently it is an unimportant virtue.

This is not surprising from an administration that responded to Sept. 11, calling for Americans to "buy a car." Nothing signals a complete lack of domestic leadership better than the ringing endorsement of mindless consumerism in the face of international crisis. The reality is that buying an SUV, while not as direct a connection to terrorism as Huffington suggests, does help the guys who help the terrorists. Low-mileage vehicles mean high oil demand. High oil demand means high oil prices. High prices (with a relatively stable cost of production) end up as pure profit for the terrorist-sponsoring states. If anything, it makes it easier for foreign governments to "misplace" substantial sums of money that later turn up in the hands of al Qaeda. It's economic demand for dummies. (Combined with the adamant resistance to combating the War on Drugs from a demand perspective, one wonders if anyone on Pennsylvania Avenue even opened their John Maynard Keynes reader.)

As long as this administration is going to bend over for every special interest group, maybe they could find a way to include a third party in their economic nookie - in this case the American people. It's time for some energy policy innovation. Let's take all that money we use to subsidize the non-existent oil-refinery shortage, and instead use it to start encouraging the domestic automakers to research even-better hybrids. As long as we are going to dole out corporate welfare, let's use it in such a way that advances an interest of all Americans - financially cutting off the terrorists. If it is part of a long-term phase out of the old engine, there are lots of moderates and liberals who would go along with opening up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to drilling - as long as there was a serious effort at producing vehicles that operate on as little oil as possible.