“If Saudi Arabia were to become unhinged, the consequences are almost impossible to imagine—politically, economically, at every level,” said Ryan Crocker, who was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq until 2009. “But I don’t see it happening.”
Saudi Arabia suffers from a despotic, myopic, reactionary government that bases its authority upon a religion that quite literally demands that its followers render all non-Islamic countries either conquered or destroyed. Once we get past these trivial details, The Saudis remain a critical US ally. We currently have no other valid choice.
Despite the fact that The Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially exists to enslave the rest of the world under Islam, they head up an international organization that provides approximately 40% of the world’s petroleum oil. This natural resource oligopoly forces the modern world to tolerate their ignorance and barbarism. It also forces us to view the worst possible outcome of tomorrow’s Day of Rage Protest with concern and impotent fear.
The protest movement organizing the events scheduled for tomorrow has a list of demands that will not be met as a direct result of the form and nature of Saudi Arabia’s current government. Arabian Business.com (in the article linked above), lays out some of the more controversial demands.
The demands included “that the ruler and members of the Shura [Consultative] Council be elected by the people” as well as calls for an independent judiciary, release of political prisoners and the right of freedom of expression and assembly. They also sought a minimum wage of SR10,000 ($2,700), greater employment opportunities, establishing a watchdog to eliminate corruption and cancellation of “unjustified taxes and fees”. Other requests included rebuilding the armed forces, reforming Saudi Arabia’s powerful and conservative Sunni Muslim clerics, and “the abolition of all illegal restrictions on women” in the kingdom.
(OB.Cit. Arabian Business.com)
To further complicate matters, the monarch and the religious leaders of Saudi Arabia have already offered their predictable statements on the proposed Day of Rage. They have implied that anyone who participates in tomorrow’s demonstrations is a religious heretic.
“Every citizen should co-operate with the authorities to maintain security and stability throughout the kingdom,” warned the appointed shura council chairman, Abdullah Al-Asheikh. Saud al-Faisal, the veteran foreign minister, weighed in: “Reform does not come via protests and [the clerics] have forbidden protests since they violate the Qur’an and the way of the prophet.”
Thus, the protestors are asking for the Saudi Monarch and his Royal Council to consist of elected offices. They want the judiciary to become a separate branch of government. They want a professional military that is not a private security force for the monarch, clergy reform and furthermore, they demand equality for women.
Should King Abdullah actually wake tomorrow morning, stand smiling on his balcony and announce to the gathered crowds “You guys are absolutely right! Come on in, have a seat on the palace furniture and let’s discuss how to make this happen!” it would be hard to still consider Saudi Arabia either Islamic or a kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s authorities will thus have two options.
The Monarchy could choose to grandly ignore the entire event. The propagandist employed by Saudi state television could report on it briefly, call the demonstrators the Arabic equivalent of “Tea-bagger” and estimate crowd sizes by dividing all reliable counts by ten or fifteen. Anyone who actually got violent or vandalized anything of worth would be carted away to a place God wouldn’t ever want to visit.
We saw how well that approach worked here, where people wanted to reform, rather than destroy the American form Democracy prior to Election 2010. Almost every biasshole, of the so-called journalistic profession, denigrated and constantly belittled the people who demonstrated against US government policy as members of The Tea Party. This backfired, and made these establishmentarians look like the very reactionaries they were.
The other option the Saudis have is to absolutely terrorize anyone stupid enough to actually suggest that King Abdullah abdicate and set up a modern democracy. Those paper-machete Statues of Liberty that got wheeled around Tiananmen Square, they don’t look very lifelike after they get run over by a T-72. The Saudis use cast-off US M-60A3s, but the general message is the same. Nobody has been stupid enough to seriously demonstrate against Chi-Com ever since.
Thus, I expect tomorrow to be a violent wreck on The Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi secret religious police will be vicious and retaliatory against anyone who, by their definition, offends The Prophet. All of which is fodder for the foreign and domestic enemies of The Saudi Monarchy. Any acts of malicious stupidity by King Abdullah’s various coercive forces could lead to the death of Saudi Arabia’s current unstable social order.
The first Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia could be the match that lights the fuse on a massive economic bomb. America’s current portfolio of fail energy policy will leave us totally unprotected against the devastating fallout. GasBuddy.com may need to find a bigger Y-Axis to plot the average US retail price for a gallon of gasoline once that happens. On the postive side, it may be the kick in the rear that America’s Governing Leisure-Class needs to finally realize that we have to become responsible enough to produce our own energy, rather than relying on the followers of a religious faith that routinely prays “Death to America!”
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