Portajon, we have many, many interests in the Middle-East, only some of which have to do with oil.
For instance, we have an interest in not being blown to hell. I myself have an interest in that. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and under threat from the same Islamic Fundamentalists that hold power in Afghanistan. How would you like Mr. Bin Laden to get his hands on 30 nuclear bombs? Israel also has nuclear weapons, so before you cheer too loudly for its demise, I suggest you think long and hard about what would happen if Israel’s nuclear program wound up in the hands of, say, Saddam Hussein. Who, by the way, would have nuclear weapons NOW if Israel hadn’t done the world a favor and blown up his nuclear program years before the Gulf War.
We also have an interest in not being gassed or stricken with biological contaminants. Iraq has a well-developed chemical warfare program.
We also have a major interest in defending our allies, as we have agreed to do through treaty. Israel is the only Democracy in that whole region. It has been our strong Ally since its creation. Many, many Americans have friends and relatives who live there. If we stop supporting Israel, they will be subjugated or dead. BTW, our support for Israel has nothing to do with oil, and in fact makes the task of procuring oil in the Middle-East more difficult for us, because it’s the enemies of Israel that have it. All the alternative energy in the world won’t change that.
We have an interest in standing up to aggression wherever we find it, because history has taught us over and over again that isolationism is a really bad idea, and that appeasement generally leads to even greater atrocity. If we ‘pull out’ of the middle-east and stop trying to improve that region and assert some control over the governments there, we may find that 20 years from now we are staring down 100,000 Osama Bin Ladens, armed with thousands of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them.
Your assertion that Osama Bin Laden hates us because we interfere in the Middle-East is at best, incomplete. Islamic radicals see the U.S. as the ‘Great Satan’ not because the U.S. interferes, but because the U.S. EXISTS. They hate our western values, they hate our pluralism, they hate the way we treat women as equals, they hate our open sexuality, and more than anything, they hate the fact that their children are seduced by our lifestyle. They see us as a great corruptor. They would destroy us in a heartbeat if they could, even if we all stayed home and played tiddleywinks or smelted all our cars and made bicycles.
This is the problem with people who keep claiming that POVERTY is the problem in the middle-east. It’s not. In fact, Islamic Radicals HATE western aid, because it’s that aid that they see as tempting and corrupting. They allow western aid organizations into their countries only to the extent that they prevent mass starvation and the collapse of their regimes, but they hate them all the same.
Islamic Radicals see us as infidels. I don’t know if you read your history, but Islam has been hostile and aggressive towards Christianity and Judaism for over a thousand years, long before Oil was something that ever mattered. Moderate Muslims have learned to turn away from the more militant teachings of the Koran, but there are plenty of people willing to carry the battle to us just because of who we are, not because of what we do.
Methinks you would do well to crack a few books and actually learn something about this.