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After all, there are a lot of wicked despots in Africa nobody cares about in America because, ummm, there's no oil. Duh.

Hey, there's alot of need around the world, and it's always convenient to point out where you're not doing anything when you ARE doing something somewhere else. Tell me, every time you drop a $20 bill into a Salvation Army bucket when you're Christmas shopping, do you go home and download a list of every other worthy and valid charity on earth and send a matching contribution to each one??

I won't argue that the U.S.'s decisions don't encompass military strategy. They do. That's only smart. But I think it goes way beyond the stupid oil, I think it has much more to do with old-school geography and positioning, given all of the unrest and volitility in the region. It's a tinder-box, and it's one that has potential access to black-market nukes. That's scary. There's alot of terrible stuff happening elsewhere around the globe, no doubt there. But we don't have the resources to be everywhere at once, so here we are in Iraq. A good position to catalyze a monumental change in world conflict. It'll be a long time before we see the results, whether we were right or we were dooming ourselves. But you can't just sit back and do nothing. In anything in life, that's the beginning of the end. And to clarify, endless and eternal TALKING is equal to doing nothing. Kinda like me typing on this infernal forum instead of working!!