Dear Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,

I have an agenda item for you to add at your annual meeting December 5, in Dubai: It may be time for another oil embargo. It’s nothing new. A few of your members have been floating the idea already. But I see some of you, well, Saudi Arabia, having some reservations. As a U.S citizen, let me say, I support one.

Some of the U.S. driving public may remember the long lines and sold-out signs that were all over about 28 years ago. Some of us too young for that have seen the images. Most of Americans don’t know anything about it though. It may be time for a refresher course. I urge the 12 OPEC nations to close the taps until it gets some issues resolved.

The United States has a long history of tying economics, trade, making available certain necessary, sometimes life-saving goods to getting its way when it comes to its foreign policies. The U.S. has been running an embargo against Iran since it was started by Bill Clinton in 1995, and it’s only really been circumvented by supporters of President Bush.

More recently, President Bush has supported an almost total economic embargo against the occupied Palestinian territories because an election the White House called for there didn’t go the White House’s way.

Cubans, meanwhile, has been sustaining themselves under one of the longest running embargos launched by the U.S., which has at times cut off nearly everything from the US such as food, dairy products, medicine and more, all because of political reasons.

In Africa, the U.S. has routinely pulled support for medical supplies if governments allow others to bring in support as well in the form of generic versions. And the Bush Administration helped raise HIV/Aids numbers in Africa by cutting funding to safer sex education and condom access in favor of promoting the Christian imperative of abstinence above all.

So, nothing new. As the U.S. — the leading example of capitalism — clearly shows politics and economics mix. And sanctions, embargos, boycotts, etc., have had a positive history in other instances as well. South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Some the itme may be ripe to cause some change with U.S. now as well, as the dollar continues to plunge and oil hovers around $100-per barrel. As the citation at bookrags points out about the 1970s:

Over the long term, the oil embargo would change the nature of policy in the West, towards more exploration, towards energy conservation, and towards more restrictive monetary policy, which more aggressively fought inflation …

and that was just after a couple of months. What if you had the moxy to keep it going six months. Or a year, maybe. No single OPEC ountry could do this on its own, and there’s to reason that one should.

Individually, many OPEC members have been beaten up at one point or another by the U.S.: an attempted coup against Venezuela, occupation and chaos in Iraq; embargoes and boo-scary war mongering against Iran. I say return the favor. Set a list of demands at this upcoming meeting, or even just one, and close the pumps for a while. Get the U.S. out of Iraq. Tell them you want UN weapons inspectors in all their nuclear facilities. Tell them you want this Annapolis meeting to close with an end to the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Order it to stop tying medical aid to U.S. patent laws in Africa. Or, follow the White House’s example and just say the embargo will last until there are fair and free elections in the U.S. that go the way you want them to.

It will give Washington D.C. something to think about and possibly do some good for the environment. Those pre-1973 woes are back again. Inflation is getting out of control, the dollar is plummeting due to current U.S. policy, and as for energy conservation, well, there’s a whole publishing and film industry in warning people about climate change in the U.S., but nothing going on that puts anything into action. Going cold turkey for a while could help. So don’t think about it as just doing something for yourselves, you’d be helping America.

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