I don't usually comment much on the whole arabs, oil and ideological
antagonism thing, because I don't know a lot about it and have even fewer
opinions, but I've had a few passing thoughts lately that I thought
I'd toss out, for what they're worth. First, after the stories coming
out of Saudi Arabia from the foreign nationals held there, it seems
the government has few ethical limits to its behaviour. So, looking
at the most recent violent attacks in that country, which targetted
locals, and foreign islamics, including children, I have to ask,
who is most likely to benefit from this, and the answer seems to
be inarguably, the Saudi government, which is already reaping those
benefits from citizens outraged by the supposed Al Quaeda attacks.
Well, I let you imagine the inference I draw from this line of thinking.
I have a different take here. I think it's likely that SA citizens were generally not "outraged" by the attacks. Any innocent Iraqis who were killed will be considered martyrs and will go to Paradise -- and the foreigner-Muslims, too, if it comes to that. The Al Qaeda attack was quite near the royal palaces for one thing (their ultimate objective) and against foreign workers for another (considering that there are so many unemployed young SA males).
The next point is about Bush and his reelection. I have said here
that I expected there would suddenly appear a new urgent target
for the american military conveniently just before the election,
but I have heard an alternative possibility from an american who
believes that this trick may have been tried too many times to
work again. Rather, he suggests that the continued liberty of
bin Laden and Hussein are not so much due to their cleverness,
but rather the restraint of american agents tracking their locations,
who will only move at the politically opportune time in the weeks
before the election. Well, we'll see, I guess.
I think your American commentator is quite wrong. I'm sure that the military have tried very hard in attempting to kill Osama and Saddam. But they simply haven't had the intelligence resources to find out exactly where they are at any one moment of time.
I think that Osama is probably a spent force (except as an icon of the Taliban within Afghanistan) and that the Al Qaeda in SA are largely autonomous now (in fact, I think that Sept 11 was largely independently planned and that Osama didn't have a great deal to do with it except to supply funds and encouragement.) When a sufficiently dominant Al Qaeda personality emerges within SA (unless they can smuggle Osama in), as is probably inevitable, then the Saudi royal family will really have to start worrying.
In Iraq, I think that there are three distinctly different sets of terrorists. Firstly, Saddam's supporters, mainly engaged in road-mining and RPG activity against American patrols and helicopters. Secondly, there are Sunni terrorists. Thirdly, there are extremist Shia sects (which have probably been relatively quiescent so far except for assassinations of moderate Shia clerics). The last two are the suiciders who are being very skilfully directed against foreign targets like the UN, Red Cross and other foreigners. Like normal Afghanis, the Iraqi Arab supporters of Saddam wouldn't dream of being suiciders. There's probably an unsaid "understanding" between the three factions that they all have common immediate objectives, but I'm sure that there's no possibility of a continuing united front. They'll all be attacking one another fearfully when the Americans leave whatever constitution they may have been left with.
We've had to learn all this about Iraq since the invasion! But the Arabic experts in the US State Department -- who surely knew all this -- should have laid this on the line two years ago when Wolfowitz, Elliot and only one or two more started to manipulate Cheney and Bush -- only too ready to be persuaded because of the additional private perks they could obtain from an invasion. The trouble is that Cheney and his energy team didn't do their homework properly and the US and UK oil corporations have refused to play ball because their time-horizons are much longer than any politician's.
Any objective observer is now realising that Saddam's regime was probably the best possible one for Iraq at that stage of its history. Nasty though he was, he was preventing internal fighting between the Shias and Sunnis and was encouraging the development of a secular education system (after the singing of the morning hymn to Saddam!) and the growth of a fairly large professional and entrepreneur class. This is certainly not allowed in SA and only partially so in Iran. Only this sort of person, rather like Kemal Ataturk in Turkey in the 1920s, can bring a deeply reactionary religious country gradually into the modern fold. (Even now 'democracy' it is still on a tightrope in Turkey)
It is quite obvious now that democracy of the sort that western politicians keep on crowing about is impossible in the Muslim countries in the foreseeable future, any more than it is possible in China, or in Russia, or in India or in Africa or in South America. In all these cases their unique pre-existing cultures are too deep and they must find their own way towards some type of modern government that has some form of basic responsibility for their countries as a whole, particularly the poor. So far, none of them, except possibly China, has any such notions.
Bush must now be yearning for a Saddam-type personality in Iraq who would supervise some sort of mock democratic type elections and to whom he can hand over power immediately to save his own electoral bacon next November. But there aren't any. My recent suggestion that Bush might hand over power to a Shia-dominated constitution is faulty because I hadn't sufficiently realised that Shiaism is itself deeply schismatic.
Bush is finished. He can only hope for miracles now. I think Dean is likely to whip him hands down in November 04 unless something really miraculous occurs in the American job market sufficient to boost present levels of consumer spending and for most Americans, except the intelligentsia (who don't have them), to continue forgetting about their credit card debts as encouraged by Greenspan (but less so by the Bank of England which has just raised interest rates by 0.25% in beginning to try to prevent an inevitable personal debt catastrophe because of absurdly low interest rates over the past several years).
The only alternative that will affect Bush and Cheney is a coup d'etat in the form of an impeachment brought against them for illegally taking their country into war on false evidence. (And perhaps an international war crimes tribunal further down the line.)
Too often, multinational corporations are vilified as though all of them are corrupt or greedy or whatever. But what is happening now is that some of them are now beginning to raise their voices against Bush's policy. This is really serious for Bush. He's finished
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
