For half a trillion, we could be energy self-sufficient

I'm tired of hearing how it's naive to think that America could become energy self-sufficient. It's just money. At the outset of World War II, the physics of nuclear chain reactions were only hazily understood. At the end, we had a bomb with explosive power orders of magnitude greater than anything theretofore known. How did we get it? By expending money at a rate never before contemplated on physics research and the production of fissile material. At its peak, the Manhattan Project was comparable in size to the pre-war domestic automobile industry.

It cost billions of dollars at a time when a billion dollars was a lot of money. The country spent the money because it felt that it was necessary to win a war. We are now in a self-proclaimed war against terrorism, in addition to two "hot" wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The people we are fighting only have enough money to fight us because we consume so much oil. Otherwise, oil would be $25/barrel and a lot of Arab countries would be barely staying afloat economically. If we didn't need their oil, we wouldn't care who ran their countries. If we weren't in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda would really not much care about America. The Saudi royal family would have to pay cash for their next 747 because their credit wouldn't be good, but otherwise everyone would be happy.

I guess this doesn't quite apply to Afghanistan, but there it's a different product -- heroin. We can't stamp out heroin use. We've been trying for two or three generations with little success. So let's give it up. Legalize it, tax it, use the proceeds to provide treatment for those who want it and let the others have enough that they can shoot up till they die. And stop funding the Taliban with the money that our addicts steal in order to support their habits.