Fuchs, I suspect your "oil math" is the direct costs and only the tip of the iceberg; with the majority of the true costs to the US, and in turn, the global economy looming beneath the surface in the indirect effects.

A better point to support your argument is that it is a global market and all of these countries must sell oil to survive. For the even the Saudis to threaten to not sell us oil is like a small child threatening to hold its breath until it gets its way. Either it must soon gasp for air or collapse; or you just turn the impetuous brat over your knee and remind him of his true place in the big scheme of things. Bottom line, is that such disruptions are minor.

For Germany, the better example is probably your relationship with Russia than your relationship with Libya when we discuss the US and the Middle East as a whole.

All of this could be solved in short order if the US were a good colonial empire like our similarly situated predecessors. We would have simply colonized all of these places, or carved off the parts that we wanted (ala the Brits all along the gulf coast, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc) and exerted our dominion over the same, taken the resources at cost, and emplaced puppet regimes to guard our interests under the Stars and Stripes.

But we are in this moral middle-ground. An "Empire without Colonies" is how I see it. We get into all the same messes, but with half the benefit and far less ability to easily smack unruly leaders and populaces back into line when they try to exert some independence as well. We'll just chalk that up as a phase we had to go through.

Now it is time to move on to the next phase, perhaps a "World Power without Empire"? Who knows, but events such as are unfolding now across the middle east are shaping that transition right now. We miss all of that if all we do is stare into the flames.

We live in dynamic times, and an new era is emerging. I personally think it will be an era marked my much more conventional warfare, though with new non-state players in the mix in new ways, than this transitionary period has been. We would be foolish indeed if we confuse transition for the new reality and prepare for it rather than what comes next.