Today’s lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal makes the excellent point that Hussein’s oil stoppage is “a stupid and futile gesture.”

I couldn’t agree more. “It will neither help the Palestinians nor hurt the global economy,” the Journal writes, then continues, “though it is one more reason for President Bush to begin marshaling his coalition to depose Saddam.” Huh? If Hussein’s action is so harmless, why does it provide any rationale for ousting him?

The Journal’s editorial writers are again on the mark when they write:

What matters much more to the price of oil — and there is only one global price — are events in Venezuela. That country exports 2.5 million barrels a day, and for six weeks President Hugo Chavez, a Fidel Castro wannabe, had been messing around with the state-run oil company. And indeed after the military forced Mr. Chavez to resign Friday, oil prices dropped to just above $23 a barrel, after surpassing $28 a week earlier.

So Venezuela matters much more than Iraq, and things look to be going in the right direction there, precisely because Venezuelans punished their leader for trying to use their oil reserves as a political tool. They export 1 billion more barrels of oil a day than does Iraq. Sounds good. But the Journal editorial then concludes:

And if [Dubya] really doesn’t want to worry about an Iraqi embargo, he can go to the source of so many security problems and finish the job his father started against Saddam.

What? The entire editorial is about how what Hussein is doing is of little lasting consequence, and concludes with a call for Dubya to take out Saddam. If you can follow this logic, please enlighten me, as I’m a little lost. Wouldn’t a war on Iraq make other Arab dictatorships nervous about their own future and more likely to manipulate their own oil supplies for political reasons? Iraq is not the only country in the region hostile to the United States, and Hussein is not the only ruthless dictator in the region.

Taking on the entire Middle East is not a good idea and, furthermore, is completely unnecessary — as the first half of the Journal editorial makes clear — since the price of oil is global and not completely or even mostly dependent on the Middle East. Oh, well. I guess the answer to every question nowadays is to take out Saddam. Perhaps Dubya will somehow find a way to pin the Enron situation on him too.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, it’s equally ridiculous to fret about the supply of oil coming from the Middle East stopping anytime soon.

As Michael Lynch writes in a great new column, “For Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Kuwait to give up pumping oil would be the equivalent of Microsoft boycotting the software business.”

A perfect example of this phenomenon is the Venezuelan revolution to overthrow anti-trade president Hugo Chavez. While there were many factors involved in his ouster, his using the national oil company as a tool for political manipulation — denying much-needed revenue to that country’s poor people — was certainly a big one. A political leader may get away with oil boycotts for a while, but not for long.

In fact, the only thing that can really endanger U.S. access to Mideast oil — as I’ve said before — is heightened political tensions. You know, like threatening to invade a Middle Eastern country and overthrow its leader, or continuing to involve yourself in a territorial dispute that has no impact on your country’s security. Not that our country’s wise leaders would ever do anything like that.

Sure, handing over a chunk of change to Uncle Sam every year hurts, but there are plenty of other reasons to dislike the current tax system in America, as Chris Edwards explains. Even if you think the government deserves your money more than you do, you should still be upset about the many violations of civil liberties that go on in the name of paying for the many wonderful services government provides (including tax enforcement!).

What do the ACLU, right-to-lifers, the LP and the Christian Coalition have in common? Not much, except they hate each other’s guts and all have this odd affection for being able to speak their point of view.

Which is why they’ve joined forces with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-La.) to fight the campaign speech — er, finance — reform bill signed into law by Dubya. They’re all co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality.

McConnell, who has blocked speech control for years, was finally defeated this year as Dubya hoped to hush Democrat bleatings about the Enron controversy by passing the law. McConnell said that when it comes to free speech, ”There is no ideological divide. There is only one interest: freedom.”

Here is the complete text of the suit McConnel & Co. have filed. Most likely to fail constitutional muster is the provision which bans independent expenditure by political pressure groups in the final 60 days of a campaign. If there were ever a more blatant attempt to protect incumbents than this bill, it would be hard to pinpoint.

Dubya wants Congress to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unlimited discretion over $130 million to support any military effort around the world he thinks would be helpful in fighting the war on terror.

The idea of supporting indigenous efforts to fight anti-U.S. terrorists or forces protecting or harboring such groups is not inherently wrong, but I think that such financial support would have to be weighed very carefully in each circumstance by Congress. It is Congress, after all, that is constitutionally charged with declaring war, and each new financial disbursement to a covert military group is an indirect act of war by the United States.

More importantly, important factors such as the likelihood of success, the extent and danger of the threat being fought, and possibility of further exacerbating the situation should be considered in a deliberate fashion. Rummy may be a lot of things, but he’s not very deliberate. More broadly, though, matters of when and where to go to war should not be decided by one man. They should be decided by the people’s representatives. Rummy’s job is to execute the war.

Ted Galen Carpenter proposes taking on Pakistan next. He argues that many Al Qaeda members were able to cross the border into Pakistan and are now hiding out in the northwestern frontier province. He further argues that the province is barely controlled by Musharraf and that his forces really have no ability to capture or wipe out the terrorists there.

That’s not to mention that many of Musharraf’s military henchmen are sympathetic to Al Qaeda in the first place. Indeed, it was Pakistan that for years supported the Taliban’s hold on power. Carpenter writes:

It would be a mistake to allow misplaced gratitude to the Musharraf regime for belatedly abandoning the Taliban to deter us from taking the war against al-Qaeda to its next logical stage. The principal nest of terrorist vipers is not in the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, or Somalia. It is in Pakistan.

I do agree that the U.S. has no security reason to be in any of the countries Carpenter names, and that Pakistan poses a much more credible next target in going about the business of wiping out the folks who actually helped organize Sept. 11. I’m undecided right now about whether this is a good idea; I’d like to learn more.