Our problems run very deep indeed and there is no factor that looms larger than our dependence on Saudi Arabia for oil.
This is the wrong approach to assume that because we depend on a foreign country for a valuable commodity that WE are doing something wrong. We spend tons in South America on coffee beans and the South Americans don't blow up our buildings, we spend loads on Japanese electronics and the Jananese don't blow up our buildings, we spend boatloads on software outsourcing in India and the Indians don't blow up our buildings.
If Saudi Arabia is unable to receive the vast wealth that they receive from selling us their oil and simultaneously produce a tolerant population that can accept non-Muslim Saudis as equivalent human beings, then they are the problem, not us. If it weren't for the developed world finding, extracting, refining and delivering Saudi oil to the rest of the planet Saudi Arabia would be amongst the most backwards, bedouin, undeveloped, God forsaken places on the planet - and thanks to the developed world's kindness toward Saudi Arabia (we didn't just take all their oil and leave them on some "reservation" which lacked oil!) they have freeways, hospitals, malls and plenty of air conditioned mosques.
If that country's population is going to take that kindness (and money) of ours, and use it to buy bombs to kill us, they are the problem, not the rest of the world. |
