the phrase "one thing at a time" occurs.

I've said it before: we (the U.S.) could build a wall around Saudi Arabia and be out nothing we really need -- any oil shortfall could be made up elsewhere, especially now that the Russians are anxious to get their hands on a bit of hard currency. The ones who'd be hurting in any such arrangement would be the Europeans and (especially) the Japanese. Even so, we send them a lot of money -- not as much as some suppose, but still gigantic amounts -- and I see no reason whatever not to find ways to get some of it back.

If there are ways to correct the situation without disturbing the precarious balance there, I'm all for finding them if possible. There may not be, but let's have one bloodbath at a time, OK? And if financial interests among the politicians cause them to be a bit less anxious to just bomb everything and have done with it, so much the better.

One thing not often mentioned: the funds to pay for both social programs and military adventures have come from deficit spending, and that can't be supported without an active bond market. Much of the money that goes to SA (and the Middle Eastern oil producers in general) comes back here, in U.S. Bond purchases; the financial people refer to it as "recycling". I don't know how much of the U.S. debt is held over there, but I'd suspect a lot. If Saudi Arabia is destabilized completely, a significant portion of the bond purchasing power goes away, which would tend to have hard repercussions on currency stability and our ability to fund all sorts of things. There's more than one way in which financial interests get intertwined; a Democratic government wanting to expand social programs might be just as cautious, lest the funding go away overnight.

So let the folks be cautious and deliberate, OK? Some nasty stuff going on there. It may not be in our best interests to open all the cans of worms at once.