Certainly. Part of the whole rationale for national defense is protecting our quality of life. For the time being, oil is a necessity to preserve that.
Wow, you're going to have to explain that twisted concept of governments role. Government exists to defend liberty and property. We recognize a natural right to defend our own liberty and property, and the State exists as delegate to enforce justice on those principles. The United States military exists to protect our liberty and property from foreign threats. How do you make the leap from that principle, to deciding that the military also exists to ensure your "quality of life" by manipulating commodity prices through force and coercion? Should we use the military against Japan to prevent them from selling us cars cheaply, and thus reducing the number of livelihoods supported by domestic car manufacture? Afterall, isn't their "quality of life" being impacted negatively? Just whose "quality of life" and by what measure of quality to whom?
Using the American military to manipulate commodity prices has the function of deflecting the cost of commodity away from those consuming it to those who simple pay for the military - the cost is not avoided. It also limits individuals from rewarding entrepenuers with alternative energy sources by at the same time pre-emptively taking and spending their money on oil (via taxes directed to support military interventions for oil) and reducing the marginal benefit alternative energy sources (attacking the profits of alternatives helps ensure the market doesn't alter the status quo). By using our military to try and enforce an arbitrary price at the pump we also reduce the incentives of producers to find and exploit not just alternative energy sources, but other sources of oil yet to be tapped. "Go ahead and build your multi-million dollar rigs among these brutal savages, if they turn on you Uncle Sam will come save your bacon..."
In short, using the military to manipulate the price of oil has the perverse effect of forcing us to pay more (through coercion in taxes, instead of by choice at the pump) and have less probability of escaping the present situation.