(Forget about oil, Israel and Terrorism)

An interesting point of view by Justin Logan in Politico. Some excerpts;

Nonetheless, three fears have turned this small, poor, weak region into the central focus of U.S. foreign policy: oil, Israel and terrorism. Each of these concerns merits attention, but nowhere near the amount they have received over the last several decades. And certainly, none of them calls for the sort of forward-deployed interventionism both Republicans and Democrats favor.

Oil is a fungible commodity sold on world markets. When the price of oil in one country rises, it rises in all countries—even those that have achieved the Shangri-La of “energy independence.” On the supply side, when supply decreases, price goes up and producers have an incentive to produce more oil to reap the higher profits. Combine the self-interest of producers with financial innovations like sophisticated spot and futures markets that allow consumers to hedge risks and it’s easy to see why, historically, supply disruptions have had limited and ephemeral effects on price.

Even the worst-case energy security nightmares don’t stand up to closer inspection. One scenario in which the U.S. military might come in handy is if a state like Iran tried to conquer and consolidate control over a major oil terminal such as Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, giving it an uncomfortable, not to say market-making, amount of control over world oil markets. Fortunately, though, Iran doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of power-projection capability and if it did, America’s carrier-based airpower and long-range bombers could handle the threat relatively easily.

nother Middle East fear involves Israel. Here again, the precise problem is rarely spelled out, but people believe that Israel, small and friendly with the United States, lives in a bad neighborhood and benefits from a robust American presence in the region. The problem is that Israel in 2014 fits differently into the region than it did in the dangerous years after its founding. It enjoys an enormous qualitative military edge over any combination of potential regional rivals. It has roughly 200 nuclear weapons deployed on an array of platforms, including submarines, that give it a secure second-strike capability against any state in the region that might dare to threaten its survival. It is hard to see, moreover, how the maelstrom of sectarian conflict that recent U.S. policy has helped unleash across the region has benefited Israel.

Finally, of course, are fears about terrorism. This explanation for why the Middle East supposedly matters is peculiar, in that the basic contours of U.S. policy in the region predate 9/11. It is tough to think that a concern that emerged after a policy began explains the policy. But there is no evidence that terrorism is a threat that warrants an effort to micromanage the Middle East. The chance of an American being killed by terrorism outside a war zone from 1970-2012 was roughly one in 4,000,000. By any conventional risk analysis, this is an extraordinarily low risk. Perhaps this is why, as early as 2002, smart risk analysts were asking questions about counterterrorism policy such as “How much should we be willing to pay for a small reduction in probabilities that are already extremely low?”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/why-the-middle-east-still-doesnt-matter-111747.html#ixzz3GAjjFrDf

One may think that when someone gets an extortion letter from Taliban, others will have sympathy for the victim. But when leaders of MQM, a political party in Karachi long suspected of extortion activities of their own, announced that they are receiving threatening extortion letters from Taliban, the reaction of vast majority? —————you have to read one liner comments below from Dawn to grasp and appreciate it. Over 95% of the comments have a similar theme. It is a sad but fun reading.(F. Sheikh)

MQM Receiving Extortion Letters From Taliban

“Can anyone else see the irony in it??”

“ in this news Pakistanis are banned from seeing irony!!!”

“Choron ko par gaye mor !”

“What goes around, comes around!!!!”

“May be now they have started sending these letters to each other instead of others”

“Two wrongs just might make this right.”

“Isn’t this called tit for tat? or God’s justice? 😉

“Good! Payback time.”

“What a serious joke? How come extortionists be extortionated?”

“A taste of your own medicine.”

“What goes around comes around”

“Now they would know how it feels”.

“probably their own people not happy with their wages protesting in their own way.”

“It’s their own letters. Someone just forgot to mail them out.”

“he thought ”What goes around comes around” comes to mind and ”What you sow so shall you reap” one Gangster group trying to extort from another Gangster group how ironic.”

“The kind of brainwashing that propaganda machine against MQM has done in visible in the comments. The victim are displayed as culprits.. this is the irony of Pakistan.”

“ Respnse to above comment-@Javed Apparently, you are among the lucky ones. We are glad for you.”

“Please don’t kid us sir. We have lived our entire lives in Karachi and know what the score is.”

“My God am I happy after having read this article.”

“No wonder, London is writing these letter for the party leaders…we all know he is broke now.”..

“Seems like turf war between two mob families.”

“Live by the sword die by the sword”

“Qiamath kee nishani Sign of hereafter”

“@GA Don’t know why, but this NEWS made me laugh. Lately newspapers have been full of bad news, I had to try very hard for a NEWS to make laugh, this was it. Now, it looks like there are more than one BhattaKhor parties in town?”