In case you missed it yesterday, here's Victor Davis Hanson's latest excellent essay on "our friends the Saudis" and the questionable advisability of attempting to preserve the status quo in the Middle East for the sake of oil. Stability schmability, says Hanson. Actually, he says it quite a bit better than that:
What the United States should strive for in the Middle East is not tired normality--the sclerosis that led to September 11, the Palestinian quagmire and an Iraq full of weapons of mass destruction. Insisting on adherence to the same old relationship is akin to supporting a tottering Soviet Gorbachev instead of an emerging Russian Yeltsin, or lamenting the bold new world ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall--a radical upheaval that critics once said was too abrupt and perilous given the decades of dehumanizing Soviet tyranny, the inexperience of East European dissidents, and the absence of a Westernized middle class. Wiser observers have long argued that where governments hate us most, the people tend to like us more, sensing that we at least oppose those who bring them misery.Only by seeking to spark disequilibrium, if not outright chaos, do we stand a chance of ridding the world of the likes of bin Laden, Arafat and Saddam Hussein.