Is It Time for Syriana, Part II?

Remember that George Clooney flick from a few years back about eee-ville oilmen in the Middle East? Given its now-timely title, the time would seem ripe to concoct a sequel. Now, if only I could remember why it was called Syriana in the first place:

The movie's title is suggested to derive from the hypothesized Pax Syriana, as an allusion to the necessary state of peace between Syria and the U.S. as it relates to the oil business. In a December 2005 interview, Baer told NPR that the title is a metaphor for foreign intervention in the Middle East, referring to post-World War II think tank strategic studies for the creation of an artificial state (such as Iraq, created from elements of the former Ottoman Empire) that ensured continued western access to crude oil. The movie's website states that "‘Syriana’ is a real term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East."^[8] Gaghan said he saw Syriana as "a great word that could stand for man's perpetual hope of remaking any geographic region to suit his own needs."^[9] The word Syriana derives from Syria + the Latin suffix -ana; it means, roughly, "in the manner of Syrian." Historically, Syria refers not to the state that since 1944 has borne the name, but to a more extensive land stretching from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the middle Euphrates River and the western edge of the desert steppe, and from the Tauric system of mountains in the north to the edge of the Sinai desert in the south...

Something tells me Clooney and friends won't bother coming up with a metaphor for foreign intervention in the Middle East this time around.