Happy motoring

More from James Kunstler on the easy motoring nation:

What on earth does George W. Bush mean by victory? To remake Iraq in the image of Indiana?
I suppose I am the 1,289,654th observer to note that the president does a poor job of articulating the goal of our military venture over there -- which is to defend our access to the oil of the Middle East.
Incessantly flogging the word freedom the past three years was probably his biggest mistake. It would have been more precise, modest, and useful to say that we were supporting elections under a new constitution (written with our assistance) because the alternative would be to just appoint a bunch of guys we liked to be a government -- and that government would have had no legitimacy among the Iraqi people, not to mention the bawling of world opinion against it (and us). So, of course, elections were a necessity, and the policing required to make that happen has been an ugly struggle.
Otherwise, the most conspicuous freedom in Iraq, for most Iraqis, the past three years has been freedom from reliable electrical service....
Meanwhile, back here in This Land is Your Land, the easy motoring utopia will remain non-negotiable and we'll drive Amtrak into bankruptcy.