“They can send and whisk away citizens at will, and the US fights their wars for them.”
That worked 100 years ago when a semi-literate population could be sold on the Kaiser’s menace to the world (as Americans died for Britain - on whose empire the sun never set - talk about a threat to freedom in the world). Today people are too smart to die for Saudis; we currently use a volunteer force because that allows our government to p!ss their lives away with little reaction from the American public.
The Iraq wars and the arming of Egypt, the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, US forces securing the area for them, the Afghan wars, reining in on Shia Iran at the behest of arch-rival Sunni Saudis, the whisking away of Saudi terror suspects without investigation, etc., are all happening in the present, not the distant past.