And look at it this way:
Let’s say that the Bush administration knows fully well that there are serious problems with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Let’s further assume that the Bush administration wants to do something about it. How do you go about it?
How do you muscle Saudi Arabia? Do you think the U.S. could have gotten support in the Middle East for an attack on Saudi Arabia? What would such an attack do to the world oil supply? How does the U.S. stage this attack?
It seems to me that the way you pressure Saudi Arabia is by going into Iraq. Build a Democracy next door, and put a massive U.S. military base there. Gain control over several deep water ports for bringing in materiel. Gain control of Iraqi oil fields so you can help stabilize world oil prices in case you have to attack Saudi Arabia.
But I don’t think there is a plan to attack Saudi Arabia. For one thing, just because *some royals are in bed with Osama doesn’t mean all of them are. There are THOUSANDS of ‘princes’ in Saudi Arabia. Many of them have their own agendas. It’s a mistake to refer to the ‘Saudi Government’ as if it’s monolithic. It’s really more of an oligarchy - a widespread, somewhat disconnected monarchy in control of the country. So it may well be the case that many royals are frantically working to help the U.S., while others are frantically working against. Is that a situation that requires invasion? Probably not. What has to happen is the U.S. needs leverage over the royal family, and needs to defang the extreme elements.
But the essential problem in Saudi Arabia is that there is a very radical population, a large collection of radical clerics that control huge constituencies, and a large, unemployed, disaffected population of young men. The Saudi royal family has stayed in power by gaining the acceptance of the clerics by essentially buying them off and looking the other way while they attempt their Islamist revolution, and they’ve kept the west at bay by being allies, allowing bases to be staged there, and waging a powerful propaganda campaign in the U.S.
The thing is, this is a tightrope walking act. And now the winds are starting to blow. The Saudis are being increasingly scrutinized by both sides. They’re feeling the pressure. The U.S. needs to make sure that they break in the right direction. The way to do that is to raise the stakes, and I would argue that the way you do that is to park a few hundred thousand soldiers on their doorstep.
As for Pakistan, that’s just a very, very difficult situation. Sure, Pakistan is heavily tied into al-Qaida. Hell, bin Laden may be there. But Pakistan is somewhat similar to Saudi Arabia in that the government is walking a tightrope between a large population of extremists and threats from the U.S. on the other. I think Musharref would like nothing better than to have the whole al-Qaida mess go away. But his grip on power is somewhat precarious.
And you can’t invade Pakistan. It’s a nuclear power. It would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. And why would you want to, when you have a government in place already that would like to work with you if it could?
All of this just highlights how difficult the problem is. But the Bush administration’s strategy seems like a reasonable one. Get rid of Saddam. Install a presence in the Middle East free from Saudi politics. Apply pressure to the Saudi regime to cut funding to terrorists. Kill as many terrorists as you can. Break their networks up, make it hard for them to do business. In the meantime, as London_Calling pointed out, do everything you can to address the concerns that cause the extremist arguments to gain traction among the middle class.
We’re still very early in this fight. Iraq was more of an opening salvo than a war. It was D-Day. The U.S. has a beachhead now. As Mark Steyn said, “2001: Islamists kill Americans in U.S. 2003: Americans kill Islamists in Middle East”. The Bush adminsitration is taking the fight to the enemy, while doing what it can to make sure that more people don’t join the fight on the enemy’s side.