Abdullah and his kingdom is a prime target, and he knows it.
How ironic after all the support he gave to terrorism against the US.
Those who are planning to set up a caliphate would like to include the two “holy” places of Islam, Mecca and Medina in their territory.
“Abdullah and his kingdom is a prime target, and he knows it. How ironic after all the support he gave to terrorism against the US.”
International terrorism has been Saudi Arabia’s social relief valve. The nature of marriage and social practices in that area of the world make such strategies a necessity for any parties who wish to maintain their position on the top of the heap.
You see, the practice of polygamy ensures that there is always a huge percentage of disadvantaged male youth with no marriage prospects — the human sex ratio at birth is effectively 1:1, one boy for one girl, so if all the old rich oligarchs in your nation, as well as all of their privileged offspring, have four wives a pop that means that there’s going to be a LOT of dissatisfied military-aged men sitting around with not much to do... that’s what revolutions are made of.
Any nation that practices polygamy as a rule needs to either execute or exile a significant portion of it’s male population each generation, or alternatively engage in frequent bloody wars with their neighbors. Otherwise the unintentionally celibate younger generation is going to start throwing bombs and bullets at all the old farts with full harems. Under such conditions, the rulers MUST whip up furious hatred against “outsiders” in order to give the masses some other target for their simmering rage and dissatisfaction, while ensuring that the most unstable of the underclass are busy killing OTHER people.
Hard-line fundamentalism, creation and maintenance of an aggrieved victim-mentality, vilification of the “other”, liberal sprinkling around of wealth, and a an unofficially state-sanctioned and funded rebel social movement for society’s rejects are some of the essential tools used by the House of Saud (and many other rulers in the world, such practice isn’t limited to Islam) to ensure that things don’t boil over and upset the power structure. Since starting good-old-fashioned wars with one’s neighbors is a good way to get your ass kicked in this day and age, undeclared war must fill the gap.
What you get is in effect an ideological Foreign Legion that wages war without a national flag.
The House of Saud does not rule because of optimism and fairy-tale sentiments; the currency of power most certainly isn’t Unicorn Farts. They’re pragmatists and connivers of the highest order, they have to be or they’d be dead. They see funneling their society’s poor, stupid, and/or violent social rejects into suicidal conflict with other nation states as a win-win situation — they ensure that the most violent hair-trigger rejects and fanatics in their country are blowing OTHER people up, while at the same time destabilizing their neighbor-states and the west.
But then last year something interesting happened in Syria. Saudi Arabia’s Al Qaeda, their foreign legion and essential relief valve, went through a civil war.
It was interesting to watch videos of Saudi organized, armed, and funded terrorists getting suicide-bombed by other formerly Saudi organized, armed, and funded terrorists. I remember thinking some time last year that if those nutjobs that slipped the leash the House of Saud put on them didn’t get wiped out soon, we must see a brushfire start in the middle east.
The creation of a caliphate in Iraq and the Levant would not just be another nation next-door to Saudi Arabia competing with the fat, comfortable old oil oligarchs — such a religious state would necessarily attract all of the formerly loosely-leashed terrorists from all the other dysfunctional states in the middle east, arm them, and set them loose in the world with no restraining influence.
Starting to see why Saudi Arabia and Iran are probably willing to go to war to prevent that? Naturally, the most economical and beneficial arrangement for those bastards would be to get the U.S. to step in and waste blood and money taking care of the problem — such an option would actually benefit the oligarchs in the middle east by showing all the peasants that the great satan is the one to blame for destroying the new caliphate.