Oil and the Hormuz Strait

The price I pay for gasoline jumped from $2.88 per gallon to $3.15 over the last few days. It seems to be accepted that the reason for this is the threat of the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz to the passage of oil tankers.

Because of this, I hear cries of "war" on the news.

I find this ridiculous. I believe that most of Europe's oil flows through the Hormuz Strait and the US obtains a reasonable portion. Europeans have a stronger need to maintain the opening of that Strait, but the US also has a need and an obligation to keep it open for the world economy.

We have already a significant number of naval war vessels in the area. If Iranian naval vessels try to block the passage of tankers, we are in a position to blow them out of the water. This would not necessarily be war. It would merely be an engagement or skirmish and most likely accomplish the purpose of keeping that waterway open to passage of oil tankers.

Let us remember that war is an operation with intention to completely destroy the will of a potential enemy. This is usually accomplished through a massive destruction of physical facilities and horrendous death toll in an enemy country. As examples, the US completely destroyed the physical facilities of Germany by saturation bombing in the Second World War. Similarly, two major cities of Japan were obliterated, with a few million deaths in that conflict. Do we really want to do that to Iran because they want to impede the passage oil tankers through the Hormuz Strait?

I don't like $3.15 per gallon for gasoline, and I strongly support the sinking of a few Iranian war vessels, if that will bring the price back to $2.88 per gallon.

However, I am more concerned with the $2.88, when the price of gasoline should actually be less than half that amount. The reason I have to pay $2.88 is because the Obama Administration has declared its own personal "war" against oil drillers and petroleum in general, in order to foster a pie-in-the-sky program of renewable energy. If anybody believes in war, in less than the conventional manner, let's have a Congressional war against the Obama Administration, in order to get our oil production humming and the gasoline prices down.