This is a simpleton's way of looking at an issue as complex as this. It's intellectual laziness to try to water down geopolitical/historical motivations by claiming that "ooooh they did it for the oil!".
Good to see a voice of reason. All too often I think the left and the right make strawmen of each other's positions and attack them with vitriol. I don't know how we're supposed to discuss and understand complex issues in a complex world when people want everything simple, black and white where good is white and black is evil. The world is complicated. We need calm, deep and reasoned thinking more than ever.
It is true that the problem is more complicated than just Oil. However, if you look beyond the superficial aspects, the bottom line of all conflicts throughout history boils down to the two interchangeable currencies of money and power.
Perhaps the reason Oil seems such a convenient rationale is because it is readily convertible to power and money.
Well yes, with money as a proxy for power, but that makes it so oversimplified as to be meaningless. Ideology, religion, a desire or freedom, resources, sheer malice, and much more is the nuance that matters too. You can boil anything humans do to power and resources, but is that really informative? If you do that, then the Allies and Axis in WWII are indistinguishable, and that’s unwise.
Just because that level of abstract thinking renders other activities meaningless does not mean it should be the case with conflicts/wars too.
The superficial and nuances of wars only matters when you want to justify them. For an outsider, it is pretty clear who is fighting for more power and resources, and who is fighting to maintain their power and resources.
The point that I am trying to make is that we as humanity need to look at wars for what they are, bloody murderous missions on quest for power. And until we stop glorifying wars with various superficial reasons, we are doomed to forever repeating these conflicts and murdering our own kind.
I don’t want to justify wars, or as you’re doing, judge them. I want to understand them, because that and not justification or judgement is probably the best way to stop them.
I am not judging wars, I am only trying to understand what wars are, as a general concept, not least because I don't want to judge wars but because trying to judge specific wars without committing to one side or the other is a futile.
