I don't know where you would get the idea that I wouldn't like it. Gee, I'd love it if we could pin it on the Saudis--and all the other fanatical mullahs, abdullahs and inmams. Perfect bad guys, if you ask me--straight out of central casting. But somebody, somewhere doesn't see it that way do they?
It's statements like this:
"...We are a necessary external enemy, and nothing more..."
---that make me think you are not being quite serious. I don't wish to sound rude, but wasn't it OUR Leader who got the wheels turning on The Axis of Evil? And axis, which rather pointedly does not include the Saudis. Is that all we really are--an external enemy, nothing more? Is that why we fought a gargantuan land engagement against Iraq a few years ago and continue to sanction and harrass that regime? Is that why we have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia?
There's something wrong with the picture. Technical difficulties, perhaps....
I actually was serious about the "external enemy" comment, and in this context - the Wahabi have found such to be useful after the classic manner of propaganda, beginning with the Ottoman Turks prior to 1917, when the latter were the official government and had been for four centuries. Since the British were in part responsible for the accession of their clients the clan of Saud, after 1917, the Brits were never (despite the Balfour declaration identifying Palestine with the Jews) a proper focus for extranational hostility. In 1948 that changed more toward the direction of the U.S., of course, but at that point there were as yet no potentially embarrassing questions to be answered by a non-Saud majority population.
That's no longer the case. After a half-century of very high-profile gathering of oil wealth the ruling elite is faced with explaining (1) why that wealth has not served to alleviate Palestinian poverty, (2) why there are still "refugees," that is, why the Saudi government has not allowed Palestinian immigration, (3) why the guarantee of employment to all Saudi citizens now has a waiting list several years long, (4) why the per capita income of the Saudi people has fallen disproportionate to the levelling-off of oil prices. In short, why their rule has not worked out better for the ruled.
In addition, the U.S. represents the focus of a cultural threat: secular, individualistic, with universal adult suffrage and vigorous growth in technology, especially communications technology. It is that last that the Wahabi once employed to their advantage; it is the cornerstone of their power, and it is as much the existence of the U.S. as any of the U.S.'s actions that constitutes a threat to that. Because of the above questions I suggest that the Saudis will eventually be vulnerable to a popular revolution of some sort, with Wahabi support that popular revolution will not be religious in origin, and must look externally for secular inspiration - that's us. Certainly the actions of the Saudis in regards to support of the Wahabi educational system, the madrasa, suggest that they feel that way. All IMHO and subject to debate, of course...