The Gantry Launchpad

Why not attack the Saudis?

I've noticed a particular idea pop up pretty regularly when discussing the Islamofascist War: we should be going after the Saudis!

Thing is, there's a few problems with that strategy. For starters, note that the Saudis are actually fighting Al Qaeda these days. It's just not getting the air time other stories have.

Suppose the US declared war on, or just attacked Saudi Arabia tomorrow. Forget where the troops would come from, or how we could supply them; even three more divisions results in at least 45,000 more men, and considering tooth-to-tail ratios, we're looking at another 45,000 just to supply them. But let's not worry about combat troops we don't have, support troops we don't have, and ships to carry the supplies that we don't have (in excess of what's already in use). Let's look at the military/political aspects. I'm not even exploring the topic of causus belli here.

Suppose we have those three divisions (say, 1 armored and 2 mech) and we drive south from Iraq.
After all, it's only 400 miles to Riyadh, right? And we all know that Arabs can't fight, right? Well, maybe. Most folks tend to fight a bit harder when defending their homeland, Iraq notwithstanding. And don't forget the Saudi air force. They have some damn good pilots, and they're flying F-15s and F-16s. They won't be pushovers the same way the Iraqis were.

But hey, let's say we defeat the Saudi air force. I'll even give you Medina and Mecca, just 'cuz I'm a nice guy. Don't thank me, I'm a giver. {g} Congratulations, the US armed forces have once again kicked righteous ass and emerged victorious!

Only there's one little problem. To the north of Iraq we have the Moslem country of Turkey. To the east we have the Moslem country of Iran. To the west there's Syria and Jordan, and to the south of Saudi Arabia there's Yemen, Oman, and the UAE. All Moslem. Oops, forgot Egypt. And don't forget that Iran borders on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Basically, at this point, you are literally surrounded, and just how are you going to supply the troops, much less defend the territory you've just captured? Check out a map. The Med is blocked by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. You might try the Red Sea ports, but again we have to deal with Egypt, and now we have (Mostly Moslem) Sudan and (Moslem) Yemen to block off the straits. Ditto for the Persian Gulf: the UAE and Iran could shut that down quite nicely. And where are your supplies coming from then? Especially fuel and water? A little-known fact is that while Saudi Arabia is one of the largest oil exporters in the world, they don't have much refining capability on hand, so unless we can find a make our tanks, trucks, and planes run off of crude, we're up the creek.

What? Gonna fly stuff in? Go look up the costs of flying freight vs. shipping it. You'll double or triple your logistic costs, at least. And you thought the $89 billion Bush wanted last summer was a lot? Dig deeper, bud...

So now you're in the middle of Saudi Arabia, you find some insanely expensive way to keep your troops barely supplied, and you've just pissed off every Moslem on the planet. While you're surrounded by Moslem countries. Now, I generally don't give much credence to appeals to the "Arab Street," but most putative Christians (and certainly the athiests) don't really understand the hold that Mecca has for devout Moslems. The Christians aren't really fervent that way anymore; they burnt their agressions out about 400 years ago in Europe; but the Moslems are still at the place where the local imam says it's a good thing to kill blasphemers and infidel, and hey! someone just stole Mecca.

And before you get too cocky, the Egyptians aren't horrible soldiers, the Saudis have some damn good pilots, the Qataris have good tankers, and Iran has been kicking local ass for 3,000 years. I'm not even mentioning the Afghans (you think the Russian invasion pissed them off!?) and the Pakistanis. The Paks have some damn good infantry.

And, silly me, I forgot all about the Turks. You know, the people who terrified Europe for several centuries? They're just to the north of Iraq.

But, you object, we have the Kurds! And the Israelis, don't forget them. They're damn good soldiers too. True, but whenever Isreal fully mobilizes it basically shuts down the civilian economy, and the Kurds are at best light infantry which we would have trouble supplying. I'm sure you can see the problem...

To recap: you're holding the places sacred to something like one-quarter of the people on the globe, are totally surrounded by them with little opportunity to supply your own three divisions of troops, and are outnumbered at least five to one (and I'm being conservative here). The opposition has a lot of good to very good troops, most of whom would be willing to die recapturing Mecca, especially if it meant wiping out the enemy in the process.

My question is: Now what do you do? Aside from nuking half of the Middle East, that is?

Posted by Casey at June 1, 2004 10:59 PM | TrackBack