Oil Is Root Of All Ills

It is usually silly to offer a single solution to complex problems. But it’s hard not to when looking at the serial savagery in Iran and the Arab world.

Oil — the huge profits it provides and the insidious influence it gives those selling it — explains most of the world’s worries over the Middle East.

No, that does not mean the United States is fighting in Iraq to get control of its petroleum
For all the charges of “No blood for oil,” the American occupation has neither been able to reverse a decline in oil production in Iraq nor alleviate skyrocketing oil prices worldwide. And, recently, the first new contracts of the now-transparent Iraqi oil ministry went to non-American companies.

What it does mean, though, is that the vast imported-petroleum needs of the West, India and China, and the resulting huge profits that pour into oil-exporting states, have super-sized the Middle East’s problems.

CBS