...No, the foolishiness is thinking we can get involved in conflicts about Magic Sky Fairies they've been having for thousands of years and thinking we have a stake in that argument...
The trouble with that is, WE are the third side of that triangle between Islam, Judaism and Christianity... the United States is the most powerful nation within Christendom... the secularized West.
Despite all our much-vaunted 'separation of church and state'... and the delusion under which a great many atheists and agnostics operate in this country... the United States is populated primarily by Christians, and the descendants of Christians.
Our laws and culture and philosophy and collective sentiments are all strongly rooted in Christian history and tradition and beliefs... it's just that the untrained eye (or mind) cannot (or will not) always discern or appreciate or acknowledge the connection, or believe it to be as strong an influence as it truly is.
...The two things that keep us in the middle east are our thrist for oil and the stranglehold the Israeli Lobbies have on our political process...
I agree that oil is one of the key reasons.
I disagree about the Israeli lobby.
Oh, don't get me wrong, it's certainly strong, and influential, but that's merely a matter of the Jews doing a much better job of advocacy than the Muslims.
The West also suffers from collective guilt over the Holocaust, and centuries of oppression of the Jews throughout The West for centuries prior to that latest slaughter.
Thirdly, Christians (Westerners), on the whole, and in the main, tend to like Jews better than they do Muslims, because
Judaism is the spiritual and philosophical Mothership of Christianity, whereas Islam is a Johnny-come-lately cheap knock-off hybrid of the two, plus the superstitions of a gaggle of 7th Century desert heathens, and rock-worship, and camel-dung, mixed-in for good measure.
Generally speaking, the Jews don't really have to work very hard, to keep Christianity on its side, vis a vis Islam.
I think you (and so many others) tend to overlook this long-running and natural connection and love-hate relationship between Christianity and Judaism, as an underlying and highly decisive factor in Christian (Western, including the United States) support for Israel.
Like it or not, you live in a Secularized Christian country, and our interactions with the adherents of Judaism and Islam, in the context of the conflict between the two, reflect both conscious and unconscious concessions to historical relationships between Christianity and Judaism.
Or so it seems to this observer.
...Pat Buchanan once called Congress "Zionist Occupied Territory" and he was right...
Buchanan is a one-trick pony, understands far less than he would like us to think, and I disagree with his perceptions.
...Now maybe getting involved made sense during the Cold War, but not so much now...
We should be in Maintenance Mode in the Middle East and its connected areas, rather than aggressively making war in that neighborhood.
...We could take the hundreds of billions of dollars we are currently spending playing Hall Monitor in the Middle East and spend them on energy independence instead.
True.
But even if we were totally independent on the energy front, we would still be engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for the sentimental reasons I've already outlined, above.
Generally speaking, in the main, collectively, we like Jews better than we like Muslims.
To some that would seem a nasty, rude, foolhardy or partisan comment.
Doesn't matter.
Truth doesn't care about its impact... truth is truth... it is what it is.