The logic of a double-shot decaf nonfat mocha with whip.

On Friday, I was reading this news account of a "Holy Warrier" in Saudia Arabia who has changed his mind regarding his participation in "Jihad" as a result of efforts by the Saudi Government to combat suicide terrorism. It was an interesting story just on a human-interest basis. However, it set forth some facts that I had heard before, but never quite sunk in. For example, most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees in Iraq (fn.1).

Those figures got me thinking (which, I aknowledge, sometimes a dangerous thing). We invaded Iraq because of supposed connections between 9/11 and Sadaam Hussein (fn. 2), which there were not (fn. 3). However, there was never any talk of invading Saudi Arabia - despite it being the true hotbed of terrorists bent on attacking the United States. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why that is the case.

Then, the day after the first article, another one came out that expressed the Bush Admininstration's current frustrations with Saudia Arabia's role in Iraq. (fn. 4). I'm thinking, "OK, that's interesting, maybe the government is catching on to where the real problem lies."

Then, low and behold! In today's news there is an article detailing how our government is on the verge of a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, supposedly to counter the threat of Iran (fn. 5).

A little political science and history for you to put this in context:

In the "Realism" model of international interactions (FYI, Condolezza Rice is a "realist"), the only thing that ensures a nation-state's security against other nation-states is its military might. This is termed the "Balance of Power." Nation-states use different strategies to maintain their status, one of which is "soft balancing." "Bleeding" the enemy is an example of "soft-balancing." This is where, instead of fighting the enemy directly, a nation-state funds another group's fight in order to drain the enemy's military might (fn. 6).

This is what the United States was doing when we funded and trained Osama Bin Laden and his group in their fight against the Soviets in the Afghan-USSR war. Unfortunately, years later, Osama Bin Laden used that same training in his current beef with the US.

Before that, we funded Sadaam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, because while he was a dictator, he was secular. We wanted him to defeat the religious fundamentalists that had seized power from the American-friendly Shah. Then, years later, Sadaam Hussein used that US-provided military might to invade Kuwait.

A week or so back, I got an email from my friend, Steve, who was working on a police-reform project in Pakistan. I asked him to explain what he was doing there and this was his reply:

Well things here are very complicated..we (the US) funded a lot of extremists to fight against the Russians a few years back...Pakistan was the staging point for that effort. That grew into Taliban type of pockets in the west of the country. When the Russians were chased away we left them to their own desires and that's when the Taliban took hold in Afghanistan...now of course we need Pakistan again and those extremist we left behind don't like us much. So there is an internal struggle between the moderates and the extremist elements here. The Red Mosque you may have read about is or was part of that problem.,,,to make it worse it was in downtown Islamabad..the capital...so they could not ignore it..and the government is under pressure from the international community to crack down..so things are a bit dicey right now here...luckily I leave in three days..I'm thinking things might get worse before they get better...

So, if you can take all of that history and combine it with the news reports of our government engaging in an arms deal with the currently main source of suicide terrorism directed against the U.S. and the main source of foregin fighters in Iraq, it just doesn't make sense to me. Is this arms deal going to turn out to be a mistake where these very same arms will be used against our own military in 10-15 years?

Anyway, if you can explain the logic of a double-shot, decalf, non-fat mocha with whip, maybe you can explain this to me.

Footnotes:

fn. 1: See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19990697/
fn. 2: See: http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_pr.pdf fn. 3: See: http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
fn. 4: See: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
fn. 5: See: http://www.forbes.com/topstories/home/2007/07/28/saudi-arms-iran-biz-cx_pm_0728armsdeal.html
fn. 6: See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_power_in_international_relations