[Eva]

I don't understand your line of thinking. The article says nothing about SA and oil because the situation has nothing to do with oil, except as an excuse from Islamo fascists and the rest of the leftist world, to blame America first.

[Paladin2]

It would seem that SA funding is behind much of the spread of fundamentalist Islam over the last 30 years. Without the oil revenue, SA would still mainly be a place where people wandered around the desert. As it turns out we are funding the spread of fundamentalist imams and ammo dumps around the world. SA could singlehandedly fix the situation of the "palis" which has been held constant for ~ 50 years while buying off the Syrians who make their own problems in the ME (partly funded by Iran).

SA doesn't want to change, doesn't want an internal multiculturalism, wants to export their monoculture and is under little pressure to moderate as long as they have the financial means to resist change while propagating their beliefs. The fact that we want to maintain good relations with SA limits our gov't's actions to counter the Islamic push within the US. (Note that the Canadians seem to be seriously entertaining letting their Islamic community begin to apply Sharia law to their own communities.)

Our gov't wants to fight a war without putting the domestic society on a war footing. It's possible that if Iraq works out reasonably well --> change in Syria and Egypt, that eventually Iran, Pakistan and SA may be turned around, but we may not have enough time to let this happen "naturally".