Prince Bandar must be bushed

It has been a busy few weeks for the Saudis, and Bandar Bush could probably use a vacation.  They:

1. replaced the emir of Qatar with his inexperienced and apparently more malleable son;
2. supported the coup in Egypt by agreeing to financially backstop the moves of the Egyptian army;
3. replaced the leader of the Syrian resistance with one of their stooges;
4. using their Salafis in Egypt, vetoed the appointment of Mohamed ElBaradei as interim Prime Minister;
5. weakened Hamas - whose sin was being too close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - by using the Egyptian army to attack the people of Gaza.

The goal of the Saudi plan is self-preservation of the Saudi royals against the perceived threat of the 'Arab spring'. The paradox is that the goal is to be achieved by radicalizing the opposition in each country. Radicalizing the opposition allows it to be portrayed as part of radical Islam, thus marginalizing it in the eyes of the West and allowing it to be portrayed as a suitable target of the 'war on terror'.  The Egyptian army's violent attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood are intended to radicalize the Muslim Brotherhood, as that kind of conservative mainstream political Islam is regarded as the biggest real threat to Saudi royal privileges.

Prince Bandar is running circles around the Americans, who are late to the game and intellectually outmatched (not to mention made to look quite silly).  World Jewry likes the short-term strategic direction of having Muslims kill each other, but is worried about what happens if the lung-eaters actually form a government somewhere (you could get Morsi to play along, and Assad is no threat, but some of the lung-eaters are serious about hating Zionism).  The Muslim Brotherhood was so intent and focused on its goal of using the ballot box to create a very specific kind of Islamic state that it completely missed the signs of impending doom.

Creating an opposition that is entirely made up of lung-eaters is a dangerous and desperate and evil plan that may well backfire on the Saudis, but the fear of a more moderate political opposition to the Saudi royals is so profound that Prince Bandar is rolling the dice on the entire Middle East.