Now you've gone and changed the subject, Askel.
The radical Islamists would be ROTFLTAO, if that was permitted, knowing that another Arab nation was ripe for the picking thanks to Uncle Sucker.
I'll modify my statement slightly.
For us, it's all about oil.
You bet.
The beauty of this argument being that energy is quite rightly a subject of national interest and national defense.
I don't think that should blind us to the fact it's possible our "national interests" are causing us not only to squander our moral capital but entangle us in alliances and obligations that will not bear the fruit for which we're hoping.
I think it strange that -- even as we throw all caution to the winds where ready access to and extraction of foreign oil is concerned -- at home we appear bent on destroying utterly our ability to make use of our own reserves through the gamut of environmentalist legislation and prohibitions to offshore drilling as exacerbated by crises like the Valdez.
While it might be a case of exhausting others' oil before our own, it's possible that in the process of asserting our rights to others' resources, we may not end up preserving our own nation long enough to enjoy our long-range planning in this regard.