WaPost: We Need That Oil!

Silly Obama, doesn't realize the vital importance of democracy promotion according to Fred Hiatt & co:

The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome -- that Iraq 'distracts us from every threat we face' and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That's an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world's largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq's future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.

Oops, did I say democracy promotion? I meant to say that Iraq has a lot of oil so we need to try to micromanage its future. And yet it's precisely this impulse -- the belief that we desperately need to retain "influence" in oil-possessing parts of the world that got us into the corrupt bargain with the Arab autocracies that produced the conditions under which al-Qaeda arose and began targeting us. Remember when Iraq was supposed to be part of a drive for reform that changed that dynamic? Oh for the heady days of the Arab spring.