Re my post pouring cold water on the idea that the way to hurt the Saudis is to drive smaller cheaper cars, I’ve had several responses such as this:

Just pointing out a little flaw in your “civic duty” post at the corner. You wrote that: “If you trade in the Expedition for a Honda Civic, that oil you save won’t stay in the ground and thus impoverish the Saudis; it will merely be sold to the Chinese and Indians..So the sheikhs will be as rich as ever and funding as many Islamist nutters.” But it’s basic economics that if supply stays constant while demand falls, then the price of the good decreases. So the sheiks won’t quite be as rich.

Two points. First: American demand would have to fall precipitously to put a dent in the rise in global demand due to Asian industrialization. In 1990 China consumed 2.4 million bpd. Fifteen years later, it was 7 million bpd.

Second: Saudi oil is cheaply extractable oil. That’s why King Abdullah gets the romantic hand-holding Presidential photo ops at Crawford and the Premier of Alberta doesn’t. A reduction in global demand would hurt Canadians and other non-jihadist producers long before it hurts the Saudis.

Bottom line: Until we are in the post-oil era, the Saudis will always be oil-rich. The only way to change that is to turn oil into as valuable a commodity as a liquid buggy whip. That will take time and money and great innovation. Until it happens, we have to find other ways to throttle Wahhabist ideology, which is Saudi Arabia’s real principal export.

But the idea that we win the war with a passenger rail network is nuts. Energy-wise, America could return to Caveman Ug and Caveman Glug sitting around rubbing sticks and stones together till the sparks ignite, and the Saudis would still be rich enough to build a new King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center outside the cave door every week.