Set America Free Notes&Comments

The Wall Street Journal profiles Set America Free’s Jim Woolsey:

James Woolsey, a Beltway Democrat-turned-Republican, is plotting to go “off-grid” and tools around town in a plug-in hybrid with a bumper sticker that says “Osama Bin Laden Hates This Car.”[...]

Mr. Woolsey’s mantra [...] is that the U.S. needs to break its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. [...] Mr. Woolsey says he first got “ticked off” over energy when he got stuck in a gas line in 1973 — “and I’m still ticked off.” What also peeves him are critics who snipe at the call for independence without understanding it.

No, the U.S. can’t cut itself off from all oil imports or turn itself into an “economic hermit,” he says. “But we can destroy oil’s monopoly over transportation.”

Cars, trucks and planes gobble up nearly seven out of every 10 barrels of oil consumed in the U.S., the Energy Department says. Mr. Woolsey wants to chop that way down. [...]A frenetic talker with a shiny pate, Mr. Woolsey insists that America’s salvation lies mainly in battery-powered cars and alternative fuels. [...]

Perhaps because of his own mixed political lineage, Mr. Woolsey is known for bringing odd birds together. His Set America Free Coalition, a group dedicated to weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, runs the gamut from conservative evangelical Gary Bauer to prairie liberals like Tom Daschle, the former senator from South Dakota.

Steve Huntley writes in the Chicago Sun Times:

I and others have written the country needs a Manhattan Project to free us from a dependence on overseas oil that only enriches countries that wish us ill, like Iran and Venezuela, and funds hostile ideologies such as fanatical Islamism. In short, energy is a national security issue requiring government intervention in the economy of the type that conservatives like me normally don’t like.

The Manhattan Project was the World War II effort to produce an atom bomb before the Nazis could. Another example was the 1960s program to put a man on the moon before the Soviet Union could.

These required new technologies, and my thinking on energy tended to focus on finding new technologies. Others with better minds have come up with a Manhattan Project for energy that requires no scientific breakthroughs and uses current infrastructure. Those are the guiding principles of “A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security” from Set America Free. It’s a coalition of individuals and organizations across the political spectrum ranging from social conservatives to environmentalists, or, as one of them puts it — “tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, cheap hawks and evangelicals.”

ThreatsWatch notes:

the Congressional testimony of Anne Korin should grab your attention today, as we hit bin Laden’s goal.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, about ten years ago, Osama bin Laden stated that his target price for oil is $144 a barrel and that the American people, who allegedly robbed the Muslim people of their oil, owe each Muslim man, woman, and child $30,000 in back payments. At the time, $144 a barrel seemed farfetched to most. Today, bin Laden is a mere $20 a barrel short of his target and there is little doubt it will be attained. I would like to impress upon this Committee that $144 a barrel oil will be perceived as a victory for the Jihadist movement and a reaffirmation that the economic warfare component of its campaign against the West is a resounding success. There is no need to elaborate on the implications of such a victory in terms of loss of U.S. prestige and our ability to prevail in the Long War of the 21st century. It is therefore imperative that the U.S. Congress do its utmost to forestall such a setback.