Allies wink, nod at U.S. aims abroad

And then, next to Iraq, there is our “ally” Saudi Arabia sitting atop about a quarter of the Earth’s known petroleum reserves. On the one hand, it would do the Saudi royal family no good to see Iraq degenerate into a terrorist-filled Lebanon on its border. Yet, the Saudis also tire of the busybody Americans reforming the Middle East and birthing democracy at their doorstep.

The Saudis have the power to cut off funding for radical Islamic charities. They could discourage Wahhabi mullahs in Iraq’s “Sunni triangle.” And they could pour billions of investment dollars into Iraqi reconstruction.

Yet they probably won’t do any of that. Seeing the United States spend lives and billions of dollars in an unpopular war in Iraq brings them schadenfreude as well — and fewer sermons from the United States about women driving to the polls to vote in free elections.