JOURNAL: "Shaping" the Battlefield in Saudi Arabia

The heavily fortified US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was attacked on December 6th, 2004. Four Saudi Security guards and five non-US staff members were killed and several US staff members were injured.  Three of the attackers were killed and two captured.  In response, the US embassy and consulates were closed for the day throughout the Kingdom.  The US has already sent home non-essential staff and has urged tens of thousands of American corporate employees to leave the country.

As anticipated by this author, the global guerrilla campaign in Saudi Arabia is in motion.  The insurgent "chatter" in the country has been at a minimum since this summer, which presaged new violence this winter (and not that the Saudi counter-terrorist operations were successful).  The attack on the US consulate is part of a psychological "shaping" operation by global guerrilla groups in the country.  It is important for the guerrillas to frame this conflict in terms of a war against the US and the Saudi Royal family (the "apostate kleptocrats") prior to full-scale systems disruption (think in terms of methods that route around the highly optimized tolerance of current Saudi systems). 

Comments

[Walter]

> the Saudi Royal family (the "apostate kleptocrats").

It's not really necessary to put quotes around apostate kleptocrats -- there is no possible way to "frame" the Saudi royals as anything but apostate kleptocrats. It's not framing, it's just fact.

We're stuck between the apostate kleptocrats currently in power and the ultra-orthodox fascists who would like to seize power. It's a lose-lose situation, democracy-wise.

[Cardenio]

Better still, this is how we could loose the war. If Saudi Arabia goes down we Have to intervene and that's going to be like " walking into the punch " x 100 for us. (We're going to run out of money, they'll gain support x 1000 )

What could we possibly do to avid stepping on the arabian rake here ?

[b]

>What could we possibly do to avid stepping on the arabian rake here ?

Best advice - do nothing.

Whoever in future will rule SA (it will most probably not be the current string of the Royal Family) will need money and will urgently need to sell oil.
So just sit back, watch and make a deal with whomever is the ruler three month after the regime change brake down.

Any intervention would backfire in my view. Rumsfeld et al. will prove that again.

[jthomas]

It's interesting how few casualties it takes to elicit a massive response. Not counting the terrorists, this many deaths (9) could have been caused by a severe car crash. Now, 10000 contractors are being warned to leave the country. Talk about economic disruption.

For the sake of perspective, 400,000 Americans die each year from smoking, deaths about which we're complacent. Why is it that we rearrange whole economies due to a tiny handful of deaths due to violence?

[Greg]

it's the same reason the insurance industry works... people psycologically tend to overemphasize prevention. with all the anti-smoking stuff going on I wouldn't say we're necessarily complacent about smoking related deaths either, but when enough of anything happens people get more desensitized to it.

on the other hand though, if the car accident were caused by some major defect that threatened to repeat it, people might make a big deal of that too (and wouldn't they be justified to do so?). you wouldn't really want to be driving one of those cars if you knew at any moment the gas tank could explode under you, and that's more like what's going on here.