But only that makes the least bit of sense

Hagel: War for Oil

Well, there is precious little reason to give a damn what happens in the region apart from the oil supply, to which we need access (for a while, yet) at a not totally ridiculous price.

If the region as a whole falls into the hands of enemies who first make themselves filthy rich and then channel huge amounts of our money into support for Jihad and terrorism against us and once in a while cut off the oil supply out of enmity toward us and our purposes, those would all be bad things.

How often has it been noted that the US tolerates the Islamic crackpots who run Saudi Arabia only because they have not been as bad as they might have been about oil and we fear trying to get rid of the monarchy would just make things worse?

How much abuse from such crackpots do you want the US and Europe as well to have to tolerate in return for oil?

Isn’t the evident power of oil in Europe quite enough, given its concessions to Islam and its cowardice in the face of Islamism?

Interesting that Hagel is, evidently, OK with wars for oil but not for Israel while for Bill Kristol just the opposite is true.

Or so he says, anyway.

Back when OPEC was founded William Buckley angrily demanded the US invade Saudi Arabia and seize the oil fields.

He was ignored.

But he was right about the importance of oil and not unreasonable about the need to deny enemies control of “the oil weapon.”

Why the hell is it theirs to control, anyway?

A bunch of primitive, semi-nomadic camel-riders roaming an ocean of sand of no significance to anyone in the world at all, until the rise of oil to global importance at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Wars for oil in the Middle East would be - and have been, if that's what the neocon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have really been about -  imprudent and counter-productive.

But they'd be hell of a lot more sensible in their purpose than wars for Israel.

Liberal Hollywood has, of course, done its best to damn the whole idea of resource wars, though it has been a loyal supporter of Israel from the beginning.

Silly Hollywood.

Silly liberals.

But, realistically, wouldn't access to oil in the region be and have been a heck of a lot less precarious had we not adopted Israel as a client way back in 1948?

Isn't half and more than half the incitement to the rise of Islamism the exitence of Israel?