Nemesis: Why Saudi Arabia is the biggest threat to America

Ask yourself who the biggest threat to America is right now? I’m sure you came up with standard responses like Syria, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Al Queda, and maybe North Korea. I would argue that the country posing the greatest challenges directly to our way of life is Saudi Arabia. To exist, Saudi Arabia has to maintain a precarious balance between the radical Wahhabist beliefs of its founding, which guide public opinion today, and the wider world which needs the vast energy resources beneath the Kingdom’s sand.

Saudi Arabia is a country with no source of wealth other than its oil. Everyone in the kingdom lives off of the vast wealth this oil provides. There are no other industries, opportunities, or sources of income for the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia is ruled by the House of Saud, a family of herders than unified the country almost a century ago using brutal Islamic Wahhabist traditions. This type of Islam is meant to reject all types of modernity and aims to live as the Prophet Mohammed did in the 7^th century. This is the type of puritanical Islam is where Al Qaeda’s fanatical Salafism comes from. Saudi Arabia is also the most important country in the Muslim faith as it hosts Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam. Millions of Muslims travel to Saudi Arabia each year to complete the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, the largest annually pilgrimage in the world. It is the duty of each Muslim to complete the Hajj once in their lives. The House of Saud is a house of cards. On one hand, they have to deal with western businesses and use western business practices, technology, and experts to extract and sell their oil. But on the other, they have to maintain strict religious customs and traditions that resist the modernization Saudi Arabia needs to sustain itself financially. It is this balance that leads Saudi Arabia down a path of continuous direct and indirect threats to the United States. The House of Saud, the sprawling royal family that runs the country, has built a country that needs oil to be priced at about $50-$60 a barrel just to break even. That means at this very moment, Saudi Arabia is running a deficit. But the religious leaders of the country, that in turn direct the unemployed young men of the country, do not accept the modernization of the holiest lands in Islam, nor do they accept foreigners in the holy lands.

The world relies heavily on the energy produced by Saudi Arabia, and their national company, Saudi Aramco, makes hundreds of billions each year selling its energy reserves. How the country uses this money, and the possibility of cutting off its energy to the world markets, is the focus of this article. To appease the religious groups, Saudi Arabia must use the vast income generated by its energy resources to fund Muslim charities near and dear to the religious scholars’ hearts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all terrorism is funded by the Saudi government. But it comes from royals within the Kingdom who are made fabulously wealthy by Saudi Arabia’s energy revenues, which our daily life funds. Famously, as told by Tom Hanks in the true story “Charlie Wilson’s War”, the Saudi Arabia government matched dollar for dollar whatever the United States gave to the religious fighters battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. To maintain the balance of religious tradition, i.e. keep the radicals happy, vs. keep the country viable, i.e. sell its ever depleting energy reserves to the world, the country must keep the radicals at bay. Saudi Arabia does this by contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to Muslim ‘charities’ that eventually lead to acts of terrorism like the recent attacks in Mumbai, India. Generally speaking, the radicals forgive the modernization of the holiest of holy Muslim countries because the Saudis fund jihads in other countries. As I mentioned above, money funneled through Pakistan to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s built the complex web of madrassas in western Pakistan that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are currently using to find promising recruits for jihad against the West. The madrassas are like university, with Al Qaeda training camps being graduate school, all funded with Saudi oil dollars. They fund Palestinian suicide bombers. They were funding Al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as Sunnis in western Iraq. Radicals all over the world can find a sympathetic Saudi royal to drop them a few hundred grand for their terror operations. The attacks on 9-11 were rumored to only cost $500,000, or just over 3000 barrels of oil at July’s prices. This is the price Saudi Arabia willingly pays for stability within its country, which allows the royals to maintain power, and continue the vicious Saudi cycle.

The price of oil always has an inverse relationship with stability in oil producing regions. As the price rises, the United States economy becomes ever weaker. As the U.S. involves itself in the unstable regions, the United States economy weakens further, or The Saudi Cycle:

• the higher the price of oil
• the greater influence & statue Saudi Arabia has in the world
• the greater the instability(Saudi funded terrorism and mischief)
• the higher the price of oil
• the weaker the U.S. superpower becomes
• the more the U.S. involves itself in the region
• the greater the instability(Saudi funded terrorism and mischief)
• the higher the price of oil

The point I am driving at is that not only does Saudi Arabia keep the peace at home by funding Muslim terrorist activities abroad, but they also profit immensely from it, which further stabilizes and entrenches their monarchy, even though many puritans like Osama bin Laden, would like to see them overthrown so their resources can be used to start a new Muslim Caliphate. Saudi Arabia also sees the benefit of weakening the U.S. immensely by raising the price through the activities of radicals they are funding. For example, a series of suicide bombs in Israel? $20 jump in the price of oil. Israel retaliates against Palestine, or Syria, or Egypt, or Lebanon? Another $20 jump in the price of oil. Let me remind you, oil is at $50 a barrel right now, and Saudi Arabia needs $55 a barrel to survive. What happened 2 weeks ago in Mumbai? A Saudi funded organization based in Pakistan sent 10 men via boat and they mowed down 200 people trying to ignite a war between two nuclear armed nations. What is happening in Iraq, where the security situation has dramatically improved over the last year? Shiite and Kurdish markets and restaurants are being bombed. Thursday, 55 people died in a suicide attack being blamed on Al Qaeda in Iraq. What else are we going to see? Are the Saudis hands in it? I know one thing…that the Saudis have a history of funding radical activity, instability in the Muslim world drives oil prices higher, and that the Saudis need the price of a barrel of oil to move higher.

But the long term situation is only worse. The current leader, while all this nonsense is going on, is considered to be the pro-American wing of the royal family, but he is going to die soon, and we will be left with an out the ass rich nation full of fundamentalists, as crazy as Iran’s religious leaders, with billions of dollars to burn, and a significant percentage of the energy produced in the world under its sand. For example, when the current head of the Kingdom collapsed in April of this year, his duties were taken over by his brother, Prince Nayef, who is seen as close to Al Qaeda. Yes, the leading supplier of oil to the modernized world has someone 2^nd or 3^rd in command characterized as ‘Close to Al Qaeda’ in their government. This man is going to be heading the Saudi Arabia government soon. He has two quotes I love:

“We will cut off the tongues of those who try to change Islam through reform.” And “The Zionists are behind the attacks of 9-11. They perpetrated them in an effort to make Muslims look bad.”

Motherf***er, one of your cousins bankrolled the attacks of September 11th that killed 3000 Americans.

But what is funny/worse? He put his son in charge of combating Al Qaeda within the Kingdom. I guess that isn’t so funny, but it just shows you that the country where bin Laden is from, and where 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were from, still won’t admit they had anything to do with the attacks of 9-11, or that they fund terrorism through the world with their oil dollars. So he puts his son in charge of ridding the Kingdom of Al Qaeda’s influence? I’m sorry if I don’t believe that ridding their country of Al Qaeda is a high priority for the Saudis. I believe it means the complete opposite, that the Kingdom is allowing Al Qaeda to base themselves there as long as they don’t speak against the House of Saud, which is what got bin Laden kicked out and sent to Sudan in the 90s. Al Qaeda says in their mission statement, they actually have one, that they want to bring down corrupt regimes like the Saudi royal family that exploit Muslim resources, allow infidel influence, and don’t share the resources equitably.

The influence that Saudi Arabia has, and executes, over the world is the greatest threat to this nation. They’ve bankrolled the training of thousands of radicals looking for jihad to right wrongs they perceive against their faith. They fund hatred and violence against our interests to keep themselves rich, and more importantly, in power. With one royal decree, they could cripple our economy by using the oil weapon. Minimizing their influence over our way of life is the number one foreign policy challenge this country faces, which means that energy independence, however we do it, is a must. I'm not saying walk to work, take the bus, or even build train lines. I'm an American. I drive my own car so I don't have to see, ride with, or talk to anyone else. I want us to use the technological and the entrepreneurial brilliance that put us in the position of the world's only superpower and made us the greatest nation on earth, to get ourselves out of this precarious position we find ourselves in because a few backwardsass goat herders turned kings who want to live back in the 7th century find themselves sitting on top of vast quantities of the most precious resource in the world.

Don't tell me I have to change my habits. That's not the change I believe in. Give me a truck that runs on water, on air, on sun, or gets 100 MPG, and I'll by it. The automakers will be bailed out, either with TARP funds, or something will be passed when Obama takes office. This is a time to get MPG concessions. Give me more efficient heating, and I'll buy it. Give me more efficient windows, and I'll buy them. Give me more efficient appliances/electronics, and I'll buy them. Give me affordable and more efficient solar energy, and I'll buy it. Give me solar shingles for my roof, solar paint for my house, batteries, and a connection to the grid, and I'll buy it all. I don't care. Just do whatever you must to get me off the Saudi oil before it is too late. We need to have a plan B, so when that day comes, say Israel goes to war again with Syria, Lebanon, or Egypt, and Saudi Arabia cuts off the supply of oil, we can absorb the shock without missing a beat. Maybe Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities, and even though Iran is a Shia menace to Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Kingdom, they may decide to cut production to stand in solidarity. The only thing worse than a Shia to a Sunni is a Jew.

My point is that every single time we fill up our tanks, buy plastic products, and generally go about our normal everyday business, we are funding the insurgencies killing our soldiers and dragging down our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an unsustainable house of cards because Saudi Arabia is starting fires all over the world, be it Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, New York City & Washington DC, or Africa, that we have to, and they know we will, put out, because if we don't, Al Qaeda is coming biological or nuclear next time. My worry is that its the tail wagging the dog, and they're keeping us off balance for some larger purpose. So what is the answer?