What Trump gets wrong about the Middle East

Show me someone who gets it right about the middle east, and I will show you a liar.

The middle east's greatest blessing is also it's biggest curse. Oil reserves have made the middle east strategically important in a world thirsty for energy. Look at the roads, buildings, cars, clothes, and everything which makes modern life possible, and think of the energy it took to create it.

Without oil, the middle east would be utterly irrelevant, there is nothing else of value the region possesses. The problems in the middle east have nothing to do with religion or territory, but the wealth which it's energy resources provide. The mullahs in Iran and the highest ranks of the islamic state use the excuse of religion to control their people, and by extension, the wealth of their countries.

In a century, when middle-eastern oil is long gone, and the world has moved on to other forms of energy, the region will lose it's strategic significance. Religious fundamentalism will also die, because there will be no means to profit by it. Islam will reform much the same way as the christian church did. Instead of conversion by the sword, carrots will be offered instead.

I get it enough to know that I like the idea of a big wall around the Middle East to keep people in and everyone else out.

Millions of years from now, when the Sun has expanded and the Earth is a planet barren of all life except for some microbes, the microbes in the Middle East will be fighting each other.