When Saudi Arabia falls

Another notch in Bush's legacy, I predict, will be the fall of Saudi Arabia.

Whether it's a literal fall (the ruling Saudi family gets overthrown) or a more gradual one (terrorism increases, all westerners pull out, Saudi oil disruption is permanently crippled by ongoing attacks on pipelines, etc., and the Saudi family starts suffering assassinations), that little nasty country we all depend on is going through some serious and growing trouble, and we're not hearing nearly enough about it.

It's hard to say what Bush can do directly about Saudi Arabia's intransigence on fighting terrorism and its aversion to democracy, other than slap them around a bit more, which might feel good, but I'm not sure how much it would achieve in the end. Indirectly, the instability Bush's blindly interventionist policy in Iraq has caused in the region is a direct cause of the increasing problems in Saudi. You feed extremism, foster its growth, then reap the rewards when those extremists start to go after your friends (or economic lifelines, at least).

Al Qaeda is not dumb. They've hated the Saudi family for years. And they know, like any good anarchist, that the way to get the world's attention is to go for our jugular. Oil is our jugular. And all we're doing is giving the extremists the manpower and the moral credibility to launch even more successful attacks in the future.