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solarbirdOkay, so here's the deal: Saudi Arabia's population has quadrupled since about 1975. A huge, huge majority of the population is under 30, which is to say, "prime fighting age." They don't have jobs and the per capita wealth has been falling, not rising, because the country's finances have been lousy for the last couple of decades, except for the last couple of years when oil prices have been spiking.
(There're like 22M people where there used to be 6M circa 1975, and 2M of those were guest workers. The citizen population is more than four times what it used to be.)
And except for oil and a significant natural-gas based petrochemicals industry, their attempts to make a diversified economy have largely failed, and neither oil nor petrochemicals provides a lot of jobs.
So you have a bunch of prime-fighting-age men in a brutalist and hyper-aggressive male-owned society dominated by extremist fundamentalism thrown up against poor employment prospects and a declining economy, and a population that is still growing dramatically. (Remember, where women are essentially chattel, reproduction rates tend to be high. The average woman in Saudi Arabia has over six children and they've got a lot of women at peak childbearing age. Some estimates point the Saudi population at 40 to 50 million in a disturbingly small number of years.)
What if the so-called "flypaper strategy" isn't about getting Al Quada to Iraq, or more generally, getting networked terrorists to Iraq, at all? What if it's to get violence-inclined young men out of Saudi Arabia, where they're a threat to the Saudi government in general, the Saud family in particular, and, most importantly from an American national interests standpoint, the oil supplies both support?
What if Iraq is specifically about keeping Saudi Arabia politically stable by leeching off its most violent impulses next door?
I mean, I have no idea if this is actually going on, and if it is, whether it's actually one of the internal reasons, a prime reason, is considered bonus points, or is, as far as they're concerned, just stated text thrown in under the "fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here" rubric. But it's consistent with conditions on the ground, and it could kind of solve a few problems for several key groups all at once, if it worked.
Of course, the "if it worked" part is where it gets all tricky.
Anyway, this is popping into my head after re-reading the Saudi history chapters in the book I'm re-reading now. I might have more ideas based on the rest of the book. But for now, bedtime!
(There're like 22M people where there used to be 6M circa 1975, and 2M of those were guest workers. The citizen population is more than four times what it used to be.)
And except for oil and a significant natural-gas based petrochemicals industry, their attempts to make a diversified economy have largely failed, and neither oil nor petrochemicals provides a lot of jobs.
So you have a bunch of prime-fighting-age men in a brutalist and hyper-aggressive male-owned society dominated by extremist fundamentalism thrown up against poor employment prospects and a declining economy, and a population that is still growing dramatically. (Remember, where women are essentially chattel, reproduction rates tend to be high. The average woman in Saudi Arabia has over six children and they've got a lot of women at peak childbearing age. Some estimates point the Saudi population at 40 to 50 million in a disturbingly small number of years.)
What if the so-called "flypaper strategy" isn't about getting Al Quada to Iraq, or more generally, getting networked terrorists to Iraq, at all? What if it's to get violence-inclined young men out of Saudi Arabia, where they're a threat to the Saudi government in general, the Saud family in particular, and, most importantly from an American national interests standpoint, the oil supplies both support?
What if Iraq is specifically about keeping Saudi Arabia politically stable by leeching off its most violent impulses next door?
I mean, I have no idea if this is actually going on, and if it is, whether it's actually one of the internal reasons, a prime reason, is considered bonus points, or is, as far as they're concerned, just stated text thrown in under the "fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here" rubric. But it's consistent with conditions on the ground, and it could kind of solve a few problems for several key groups all at once, if it worked.
Of course, the "if it worked" part is where it gets all tricky.
Anyway, this is popping into my head after re-reading the Saudi history chapters in the book I'm re-reading now. I might have more ideas based on the rest of the book. But for now, bedtime!
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Date: 2005-09-23 01:28 pm (UTC)Cathy
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Date: 2005-09-23 02:12 pm (UTC)I'm fond of calling this the zombie strategy rather than "flypaper": using the undead carcass of a failed state for our own benefit, to Hell with the people living there. The sheer immorality of it would be breathtaking if it weren't so gutwrenching.
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Date: 2005-09-23 02:12 pm (UTC)A large portion of the mujahadin (sp?) and Afghanistan had support of Saudi expatriots who fit this profile. Unfortunately for the Saudis, once the Russians were gone, you had a well trained force with still nowhere to go, nothing to do and a government back home they weren't terribly fond of.
I'm half tempted to think that folk like ObL are actually on a mission from the Saudi government to keep these people busy outside of the country.
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Date: 2005-09-23 03:26 pm (UTC)<shrugs> I've seen a lot of "draw terrorists to Iraq" and not a whole lot of "specifically to extract people from Saudi Arabia." But I've mostly been looking at how the war has been going rather than why it was started - at least, post-invasion. (I opposed the invasion for a few reasons, most of which are not the usual ones, number one being the incompetence issue, number two being the fake WMD issue. I figured if they were lying or wrong that wholeheartedly about that, that they were probably lying or wrong about a bunch of other things as well.)
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Date: 2005-09-23 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 08:52 pm (UTC)So we send over all of our "spare" young guns who otherwise might be back here breeding and buying SUV's, they shoot back and forth with the Arabian peninsula's equivalent of gangbangers, we hope that we can throw enough money into munitions to compensate for them having more "spares" that need them some killin' than we do, the Saud family keeps producing crude oil, the Bush family keeps refining it, and everybody's happy? Except for the part where pretty much nobody's happy. And by "we," i mean "those fuckers who don't represent me in this so-called democracy."