[Bromius]

While lacking the supposed moral and ethical reasons for our current policy in that region, what you've suggested makes a hell of a lot more sense. Freedom and democracy work well if the citizens under that system are relatively committed to living peacefully. At the present time the folks who have had this chance, the Palestinians, Lebanese and Iraqis are using it in their own ways to just create more violence. Call it freedumb and democrazy. If they are free and use that freedom to fight amongst one another that is their problem. If they are committed to that path, you're right, they will be helping their Western enemies in the long run.

I could also see this actually boosting oil production and lowering prices, since a sectarian war within Islam would pit the various oil producing countries against one another. It would make it harder to coordinate production to control prices. Also, since oil is their major export and source of income, if they are engaged in life and death military struggle they'd be inclined to sell as much as possible. It would be similar to the leftist militant groups in South America financing their operations w/ cocaine. Perhaps this is what would be needed to boost production in Iraq to pre-Saddam levels.