The Cambridge Chronicles

C: I noted that with great interest. but i'm not sure what to make of it yet.

R: One could see it as a kind of joke.

C: does it mean that now-or soon--we will have secured enough oil from iraq that we can begin to put much more pressure on Saudi Arabia to do what we want?

R: We won't ever have enough oil from Iraq--until we've used it all. Then it will be time to move on.

The problem with Saudi Arabia is Mecca and Medina. Its a tad harder to rationalize a war with SA as anything but a religious war--and that would mean a LOT more trouble for the US. Just look at Israel/Jerusalem/Palestine. The Dome of the Rock, just above the Wailing Wall, isn't the most important site in Islam. But enough to be plenty of trouble.

C: but then wouldn't having troops already in saudi arabia make it easier to pressure saudi arabia?

R: There's going to be pressure in Saudi Arabia when the US leaves, but it will be the fundamentalists pressuring the rest of SA to shape up and go extremely religious.

That will be easier to do with the US gone. There may even be an overt revolt against the SA military--or, like in Egypt with the assassination of Sadat, members of the military take out the civilian leadership.

C: i guess there were never enough there to accomplish that?

R: That was probably never the objective because of the religious
situation. Iraq has plenty of oil. So does Canada. Let SA go to hell. Let them kill each other like Iraq and Iran. Do you remember ******? He's now doing an internship at Harvard Med. His parents smuggled him out of Iran as a teenager because they figured the government wanted him for human wave cannon-fodder attacks on the Iraqi front lines. He missed that and became a short-term junkie in the Harvard Square punk pit.

Anyway, where was I... Perhaps the US does intend to take SA. But it wouldn't be like Iraq. Its a bigger place. They have lots of American weapons. They have American training. It would not be a pushover like Iraq. But surrounded by American forces in Iraq, Syria, Israel on the other side...

C: or are you suggesting that we are somehow covertly trying to purchase some stability in the region

R: Covertly? The states around Iraq are likely to be very quiet for some time. The fundamentalists are another story. Osama and his minions haven't given up. A lot of been killed and a smaller number captured. But they ain't giving up. You don't do that when god is on your side.

C: vis a vis our occupation of iraq by making a bargain with al quaeda and/or the other fundamentalist anti-american islamic factions?

R: 911 was the results of a failure to make a pipeline bargain with al quaeda and the taliban--probably more like the straw that broke the camel's back. And not unlike the situation with Japan just before they attacked Pearl Harbor. The US was doing deals that were squeezing their access to oil in the Pacific region. They had to have oil from these places--still true today, because they don't have any of their own. More recently, the Taliban ended opium growing and lost themselves huge amounts of money by getting out of the drug trade. They don't have any oil to speak of--but are a good transit country for oil from the Stans. And so it goes. Pearl Harbor and 911 could probably have both been called off iF things had gone some amount the other way between the countries involved. And al quaeda, like the Japanese, made a similar mistake about the US by thinking it a soft country that couldn't stand the death of its soldiers. But then they didn't realize waht a difference having a Republican President would make with the far-rights ideas about casualties. They were an excuse to do nothing during Clinton's eight years. Once he was gone it no longer mattered--and that thousands of Americans had died. They, like the Japanese, equated a life of leisure, lust, and a seeming lack of standards and self control to mean weakness. They missed seeing NEARLY EVERY OTHER QUALITY of life in this country. We have all the things they see as a sign of weakness--but we have all the strengths and stability that their societies/religion/countries completely lack. In a society based on extreme and narrow religious ideas you do not look at many things--they don't matter. A short book typically answers any and all questions. There are no other explanations or solutions. This country, since it produces so many solutions, is bound to find paths and ways of doing things that they can't comprehend or answer. Their 911 trick will be very hard to do again. So will many other things. On the other hand, when the US attacked Iraq there was only one possible solution or way to fight back and win--nukes. Which would have been answered with even bigger nukes. Iraq can't build a tank. They bought from the Soviet Union. So they were old. Same with everything else in their arsenal. Its a society limited and restrained by fear. Thousands of prancing fancy dressed soldiers, with no body armor or all the other accoutrements of modern warfare, is nothing more than an army designed to control unruly crowds of women and children.

That's some of my take on it. And I better quit before the sun comes up.