It's largely due to that alliance that ISIS even cares about Europe. The "alliance" itself is largely one-way - the US and Europe topple the government of any c

It's largely due to that alliance that ISIS even cares about Europe. The "alliance" itself is largely one-way - the US and Europe topple the government of any country that looks at Israel funny, and in return they get.. what? The usual answer is oil, but the cost of the Iraq war is estimated at $1.9 trillion [1]. Even if all of Iraq's oil industry was taken by the US, and its revenue was 100% profit that went entirely to the US, at the current record-high export of $11 billion/month [2], it would take 15 years to break even. But neither of those assumptions hold - oil industry profit margins vary between 5% and 30% [3,4], and the media seems shockingly disinterested in reporting how oil company ownership or profit flow changed following the war, but let's be generous and say it resulted in half of their total profits being diverted to the US (that weren't already diverted before). Under these more realistic but still very generous assumptions (using the 30% high-water mark for profit margin), it would take 97 years to break-even. That is also assuming Iraq would remain a stable pawn to US interests for that entire time, and it wouldn't take more military spending to keep them in line. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/2/iraq-oil-exports-11-07-bn-in-march-highest-for-50-years https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/2/iraq-oil-exports-11-... [3] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012015/what-average-profit-margin-company-oil-gas-drilling-sector.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012015/what-average... [4] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/oil-industry-ranks-60-by-profit-margin/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/oil-industry-ranks-60-by-prof...