Samizdata

The Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked western civilian workers in Saudi Arabia are nothing more than a timely reminder that the overthrow of Ba’athist Iraq was not the end of the matter which blasted into the public consciousness on September 11^th 2001. Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorism were related subjects but were never the same. I was starting to detect a “Game over, now it’s Miller Time” attitude in some newspapers and blogs after the triumph in Iraq, but I think this shows that if there is ever a time for complacency, it sure as hell is not now.

It will be interesting to see what happens if this atrocity leads to a mass movement of Westerners out of the accurséd Kingdom. If the risks posed by terrorism means the Saudis become unable to induce western technicians and specialists from working there at any price, I suspect the impact on the Arabian economy will be quite dramatic. No doubt within a couple years infrastructure and certain essential functions will decay beyond the point where the regime’s spin doctors cannot hide the truth that Saudi Arabia is not an internally viable nation-state in any modern sense.

And if the Saudi Wahhabist regime’s ability to use petrodollar funded patronage to buy off the disparate elements of its indolent society grinds to a halt, what happens then?

Would a monstrous and tyrannical fundamentalist regime take over? And would that regime be a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism? Well considering that the current regime already is a monstrous and tyrannical fundamentalist regime, and it is from Saudi Arabia that most of the September 11th terrorist hailed, so frigging what if it collapses?

The House of Saud is built on sand, so let it go down the toilet of history and let’s see what comes in its place. After all, if we like the look of what comes next even less than the current tyranny, it is not like the 3^rd Infantry Division has to travel all the way from the United States to do something about it… and that self-evident fact alone should concentrate the minds of those who would be the new rulers in Riyadh.

The US will not be in the region forever but at the moment the peoples of the Middle East are very aware that they are living in the shadow being cast by that 900 foot tall gorilla currently standing astride Iraq… for a short while at least, that might not be such a bad thing just so long as the gorilla knows when it is time to go home.

It is interesting to note that the pseudonymous Baghdad blogger Salam Pax is considering supporting the secular Iraqi Communists in the aftermath of Ba’athist Socialism:

[May Day], workers of the world unite. The Iraqi Communist Party and the Iraqi Communist Workers Party are covering a lot of walls with red posters. I have not heard that Nadia Abdul Majeed of the Communist Workers Party is in Baghdad. I am still offering to volunteer if they do some cosmetic changes to their name. They have their hearts in the right place, unlike most other parties who have their hearts near their wallets.

Now as he is a member of a minority by virtue of his private and personal lifestyle choices, I am amazed he finds the slightest intellectual or emotional pull towards any system which takes a collectivist view of the world. To be a collectivist is to have a vision of society which argues that not only should ‘society’ have the right to decided what you (and I do mean YOU as an individual) and a willing other person can do together peacefully, be it exchanging good, money, ideas or bodily fluids, but that ‘society’ also has the right to use violence (i.e. law) to compel you to act as the state wishes. This should logically be a hard sell to any group which by its’ very nature will always be in the minority and hense always politically vulnerable.

Islamic collectivists will not tolerate things like homosexuality or charging interest on a loan, even between willing participants, and will use The State to enforce their views… Communist collectivists will not tolerate exchanging goods or even your own labour privately, even between willing participants, and will use The State to enforce their views. But the core principle underpinning all collectivism is that agreements between consenting adults, be it in the market place or the bedroom, are not something that can be allowed without the ‘political community’ accepting it: in other words, regardless of endless claims to the contrary there is no such thing to a collectivist as civil society, just The State, which is to say, everything is political and politics is about the use of FORCE.

Nothing is private and personal under a collectivist system because everything is subject to politics. It is not a survival trait to be a quirky eccentric or outsider in a collectivist system. Under a non-collectivist system you are free to form communes, pray to Allah (or not), have sex with anyone who is willing. But under collectivism, interaction means politics and politics means laws and laws mean force… and as laws are not optional, you cannot just opt-out and pursue an alternative lifestyle.

If the Iraqi Communists, unlike the Iraqi Party of God, will not persecute someone for being gay, that is not because they think such matters are a private issues… there are no private issues under collectivism… it just means they will allow you to do this or that, not that they think you have the right to do as you please. Remember that before you start sticking up pro-collectivist posters in Baghdad, Good Mister Pax.

I would not presume to tell Salam Pax who to vote for but I have no hesitation telling him what to vote for: What you need after Ba’athism is not just a different government but less government.