Pepe Escobar: . . . the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians".
To a very real extent, the business of political strategizing, which I think is my main occupation, is predicated on the notion that strategy is complicated and a lot needs to be written about it. To this end, I have written about two million words on politics over the last four years, or the equivalent of about nine versions of Ulysses by James Joyce. While there is certainly a lot to write about on American politics, it is also true that many of the factors that make the largest difference in American politics are actually both quite simply and fairly immutable from an activist perspective. For example, the price of gasoline has long been connected to Presidential approval ratings, and that was as true under Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton as it is under Bush II.
The price of gas directly affects the lives of most Americans in a way few, if any, other national trends can. If gas costs more relative to median real income, then the economic situation of most Americans becomes immediately worse. If gas costs less relative to median real income, then the economic situation of most Americans becomes immediately better. Our way of life is utterly marinated in oil far more than any other natural resource. It impacts not only the cost of travel, but also the cost of housing, consumer goods, wages, health care, electricity, and even education. Hell, it even affects the price of coffee, which might be the natural resource with the second largest impact on the history of the world over the last five hundred years. And, in the end, there is almost nothing that short term activism can do to change the price of gasoline.
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