It’s all about the oil?

I’ve had a question on my mind for quite sometime now, and today’s actions in Israel drove the point home for me. I keep hearing liberals claim the Bush administration is motivated by oil. They say he and Cheney are so tied to “big oil” that they’re willing to take us to war over it. This idea is reinforced by the arab nations who dislike America.

Here’s the problem with that theory. If we were so motivated by oil, why do we continue our support of Israel? I mean, our support of Israel is the single biggest factor in the hatred of the U.S. in the middle east. (Just look at how quick the Palestinians claimed Bush was behind the authorization of today’s assassination of Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, the Hamas Leader - source) So it would appear we could resolve our differences with the arab nations all over the middle east if we simply dropped our support and protection of Israel. Afterall, Israel is such an insignificant country in the middle east in terms of oil (they don’t even appear in the top 20 producers in the world and the U.S. produces more). Yet we continue our support of this country leading to a hatred of us and a continued battle with terrorists who claim our support of Israel is one of the primary reasons for attacking our interests.

So it just doesn’t make sense that this is all about oil, because if that were true - our easiest avenue would be to drop our support of Israel and become “friends” with the arab nations. Then we’d have all the oil we’d need and the “big oil” companies would blow out wall street profit expectations in record time….

Something just doesn’t add up.