It’s Never Wise To Feed Feral Dogs (Or Negotiate With Armed Robbers)
They’re both going to attack you, it’s just a matter of when…
In the complicated, interconnected web of international finance and investment, it turns out that Western capital ofttimes ends up funding its enemies. In this way, it’s like feeding a feral dog, hoping to domesticate it, or at least that if it bites someone, it won’t be you. This is never wise.
In Saudi Arabia, for instance, Western, specifically American, dependence on oil has sent billions, if not trillions, of dollars to the Saudi kingdom to purchase oil. This investment has enriched Western energy companies and pleased the citizenry with cheap gas. But we were feeding a feral dog.
It blindsided us when on 9/11 we were finally bitten.
In the preceding decades, US administrations and businesses largely ignored the reality of the founding house of Saud’s allegiance to the Wahhabi branch of the Sunni sect of Islam. A rigid, fundamentalist sect, it continues to be instrumental in Saudi domestic and foreign policy. It inculcates a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam committed to denouncing and destroying Western values by subjugating them to Sharia Muslim law.
