The smarter cable TV commentators spent Friday patiently disowning any particular forecast or insight into how events in the Middle East would play out now that the U.S. has assassinated Iran’s terrorist chief, Qasem Soleimani, with a drone strike on his car as he was leaving Baghdad’s airport.

This was a brave performance given cable’s imperative to fill the airtime by exaggerating the stakes of whatever is being reported. Notice something else: the silence of the “no war for oil” crowd, once guaranteed to sound off at every...