In response to Charlie

In response to this post by Charlie.  

I think everything stated in this post is good, except I think Charlie leaves out one extremely important part that becomes extremely apparent after WWI.  Not only did control in the middle east mean control over the silk road, which meant that Britain and her European friends did not have to deal with the siphoning of money by the middle man, but it also gave Europe new markets.  Captialism only works when there are people who want to buy produced goods, and the more people you have the more money you can make.  Viewing the Middle East as simply a connection between two sides of the world that Europeans wanted to control simply for the sake of keeping their trade direct accounts for only half of the European plan with the Middle East.  They wanted control, but they also wanted to use population for their profit.