Sweet and Sour: Americans urged to give up SUVs to cut reliance on foreign oil

I was dozing off watching television when I heard something that made me leap up and turn up the volume. I can't remember what channel I was watching that late night in New York but the images and message being beamed to the American public gave me goose bumps.

You have probably heard about this advertisement, the one which links SUVs (sport utility vehicles) to terrorism and advise Americans to give them up.

I had thought these ads, which were written about late last year, had been mothballed but they are still being discussed and debated on U.S. television.

The argument made in the ads, produced by syndicated columnist, Ariana Huffington, and a non-profit group, is that Americans will be helping states that harbour or support terrorism by driving the gas-guzzling vehicles.

They argue that because the U.S. imports so much crude oil from Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia - and even Iraq before the war - driving SUVs is tantamount to supporting terrorism.

In one ad, a woman says: "I helped hijack an airplane. I helped blow up a nightclub. So what if it gets 11 miles to the gallon? I gave the money to a terrorist training camp in a foreign country. It makes me feel safe. I helped our enemies develop weapons of mass destruction. What if I need to go off-road? Everyone has one. I helped teach kids around the world to hate America. I like to sit up high. I sent our soldiers off to war. Everyone has one. My life, my SUV. I don't even know how many miles it gets to the gallon."

The script for the second ad reads: "This is George. This is the gas that George bought for his SUV. This is the oil company executive that sold the gas that George bought for his SUV. These are the countries where the executive bought the oil, that made the gas that George bought for his SUV. And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his SUV.

"Oil money supports some terrible things. What kind of mileage does your SUV get?" The George referred to in the ads, which incidentally were not endorsed by the U.S. administration, is of course George W. Bush.

The U.S. president has gone on record saying he wants to cut U.S. reliance on imported oil, an argument he has used as a rationale for wanting to drill holes in Alaska's wildlife refuge.

Even if one accepts that such sentiments were justified in the wake of September 11, the debate has not gone away and if anything, it has been revived by the recently released congressional report on the hijack attacks in which 15 Saudi Arabian citizens were involved.
It is obvious that there are powerful forces in Washington who are getting a lot of mileage from these types of arguments.

But for the American motorist, the SUV is nothing more than a status symbol.

The author is Middle East editor of energy information and pricing service, Platt, a division of McGraw-Hill Companies.