You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Either way, the Battle of Oil is mostly over. The ME is increasingly irrelevant. Arab leaders predicted this long ago [1].
[1] https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...