Different Rules

It seems we have a problem. In this post by Glenn Reynolds, it appears that there are terrorists breeding in the Gaza strip. Since we know Reynolds favors continuous occupation of Iraq in order to prevent the breeding of terrorists there, it would logically follow that he would call of an invasion and occupation in Gaza. But he doesn't. When a very similar question was asked by Andrew Sullivan, Reynolds responded: It's not like we invaded Iraq for these reasons, after all. Yeah, we invaded for really different reasons, indeed. As Andrew reminds us: A gentle reminder: We did not invade Iraq to police a sectarian civil war for ever. We did not invade Iraq to permanently prevent an al Qaeda presence there with our troops. We invaded to remove what we were told were stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and to pre-empt the development of nuclear weaponry, (totally bogus, by the way - my input) So, why are we still in Iraq? According to the Republican candidates, it is because leaving would make matters worse (even Rudy Giuliani isn't foolish enough to repeat the democracy objective). How worse? The emergence of a failed state where al Qaeda and other Islamist mass-murderers could regroup and thrive. Well ... now look at Gaza. Let's take a look... ...with no political settlement or over-arching road to any sort of compromise, we see a new and much more dangerous terror-apparatus emerging in the failed mini-state. We first saw Fatah get overtaken by Hamas, and now we see Hamas being rivaled by al Qaeda. We have, in other words, another mini-Iraq. Yup, so - Why don't the neocons support reoccupation by Israel or the U.S.? Surely, if you support occupying Iraq idefinitely to prevent a terror-state, you also have to support occupying Gaza indefinitely to prevent a terror-state. In fact, don't you logically have to occupy an awfully large number of places to do what we are currently supposed to do? And if our existence is at stake, as Giuliani has argued, why on earth aren't we already occupying most of the Middle East? And, more importantly, since our and the Israelis' experience undoubtedly suggests that occupation itself sustains and generates Islamist terror, why do we want to create more terror in the short term in the Middle East? Eek... Read Sullivan's entire post here. I think I can help Andrew with his question, though. Although he asks difficult questions, they are all still asked with the basic premise that this debate somehow involves US national security. There is another interpretation of the events that yields an astonishingly simple conclusion. When compared to Iraq, how much oil do you think is in the Gaza strip? So, why on earth would we waste our military in a place with almost no resources that we want?