And with ever increasing imports of oil from Canada, these imports will in a shorter time make the US less dependent on sources of foreign oil in troubled regions.

BUT we are an interdependent world- what happens in Japan or China or India at the moment will affect us, and as these economies grow, will have more of affect upon us.

Look, we learned this lesson from WWI and WWII, we can't be an island- we can't let the world go to hell, because that hell will eventually draw us into it.
And of course there is the nuclear weapon thing [if nuclear weapons did not exist, we would still have the problem- the nukes just make it worse- or maybe better in some sense because one could at least hope that people are forced to *pay more attention*.]

Example:
"Allowing" the Iraq vs Iran war to continue as long as it did was a mistake. It was "immoral" as everyone sort of knew, but it was also bad in terms of our national security [the only possible justification for not doing almost anything to stop it]. "Let them fight and maybe they will get tired of the war and not want to continue it", isn't a good idea. This doesn't mean we didn't have excuses- we were still in the Cold War, so that was one real barrier involved with trying to deal with it.

But we are mostly watching Sudan. We are "allowing" to decades long invasion and occupation of Tibet.

Pointing fingers doesn't help much. But Soviets were more responsible for Iraq vs Iran war- it *actually* was in their national interest to weaken and destabilize these countries- they wanted a warm water port for centuries. Both countries were more in Soviet camp then US camp. And they were selling most of the weapons to both sides, and destablizing world oil was definitely in their interests.

But it wasn't seen as US national security priority to do everything to stop it. But we still don't have this as a priority. If we really had this as priority we would fix the UN- it's not really doing a great job at stopping conflict. E.g. Why is one of it major security council members involved in the war in Tibet- and as far as UN it's ignored. Maybe, China should treated as the US was in regard to it's invasion of Iraq. Why not the same standards? I mean what is China declared intention in regard to Tibet? Can the UN montior it. What is China doing about Sudan?
Tibet and UN:
http://www.freetibet.org/info/file/file9.html

UN ignores Tibet genocide
"United States. Having failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda, and having stood aside as genocide was committed in Srebrenica, one would think the UN would have learned its lesson. Apparently not so. Mired in hopeless political fantasy, the UN is utterly incapable of protecting the world's besieged.

Right now in Sudan, Muslim extremists attempting to eradicate the indigenous black Africans in the western Darfur region are butchering tens of thousands of people. The UN will not speak out, it will not act. It cannot. It is a weak and toothless old fool.
But there is also genocide that has literally been going on for decades. The fact that genocide is being committed in Tibet every day by the Chinese Communist government is indisputable. China has for 40 years been engaged in a relentless program to destroy the Tibetan people, their culture and religion. Little or nothing has been done about it, particularly by the ever-impotent UN."
http://web.radicalparty.org/pressreview/print_right.php?func=detail&par=10400

Maybe, we could have some *reasonable* requirements for a major member of security council. By reasonable I mean modest- like some requirement to explain what the hell you doing? And say an automatic procedure that keeps the UN focus on such a thing. Something that has some accountable to it.
And to promote somewhat unreasonable requirements should seen as fighting against more reasonable, modest requirements- it's not rocket science.