I have a question, inspired by the anti-Realists tonight.
Who are the anti-Realists, and what did they say to inspire this question?
As far as the Saudis go, there is no magic wand and no way out, at least not in the short run. The house of Saud sucks, but if it falls we get state run by Wahhabi clerics, and that would suck more. That would leave us with few options. We could seize the oilfields and leave the rest of the country, including Mecca and Medina, to the Wahhabis, but that rest of the country would soon become a terrorist breeding ground. Regime change would be easy from a military perspective, but what would we change it to? Not even mentioning the overall reaction we'd get if we send troops into the holy places.
We'd also have to come up with a pretext for the invasion. WMD won't do it; they don't have any.
And so on.
Long term, the solution is to reduce our dependence on oil to the point where we don't need the Saudis, but even then they can be a pain in our ass. More terrorists and terrorist support come out of there than ever came out of Iraq.
Dig yourself a hole that deep, it ain't going to be easy to find a way out.
Current policy? Maintain status quo and look hard for another option. What else is there? |
