The other day, I made the very simple point that ethanol is good for the country because, unlike oil, it does not involve the use of carrier battle groups. Spencer Ackerman illustrates my point perfectly (emphasis mine):
What keeps the U.S. Navy’s top officer awake at night? “The Strait of Hormuz,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert confessed during a speech on Tuesday morning. Greenert meant that he’s worried Iran will close one of the planet’s most strategically important waterways, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil flows. The Iranians have spent weeks threatening to do just that.
…
If anything, Iran’s closure of the strait would probably play like its old enemy Saddam Hussein’s 1990 decision to invade Kuwait. Before the invasion, world governments might not have liked Saddam, but most of them didn’t consider him an implacable threat to regional stability (and, hence, their economic interests). Afterward, the world viewed him as a rogue who needed to be confronted.
Foreign Policy gets in on the fun:
When Iran’s vice president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, declared on Dec. 27 that “not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz” if Western countries followed through with threats of escalated sanctions over its nuclear program, the world sat up and took notice. Since then, tensions have run high in the Persian Gulf, with Iran holding naval exercises and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warning Iran that closing the strait would be a “red line” for the United States.
Newspaper headlines are warning of a possible conflict breaking out over one of the most important shipping lanes on the planet, through which almost 20 percent of the world’s oil passes each day.
The Iraq war was awesome! Can we do it again? But remember, ethanol is an expensive boondoggle!
I’ll just repeat this:
These guys defend corn fields in Iowa:
And these guys defend oil fields in the middle east:
520 Chestnut 
Leave a Reply