Recently there has been a rumor that our dear friends and allies, the Americans, have been pressuring their friends in the Gulf to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars in US government securities.
The idea behind this is to use the vast windfall profits reaped by the Gulf oil producing states to prop up the tottering US economy.
The subtext to this is the possibility of the forces of freedom paying an unfriendly visit to anyone reluctant to comply.
This is a familiar concept to the people of this region as we are used to have similar arrangements with marauding Mongol armies.
I would like to suggest an alternative strategy — one that is more effective in the long run and definitely cheaper.
From the news stories coming out of the US these days it is perfectly obvious that some American politicians, journalists and other opinion makers are suffering from the increasingly high cost of living in their country.
They are also having great difficulty practicing their professions due to lack of necessary funding.
This has led to a vast industry catering to the specific needs of this class of Americans.
The industry is called lobbying and is nothing more than a polite way of saying bribery.
I would therefore suggest using a small fraction of our wealth to help fund these people.
This method is much more personal and provides us with a direct way to influence US policy and build long-term friendships. It also opens tantalizing possibilities of directing the legions of liberty against our own enemies (whom I shall call the Forces of Evil).
After all, the Persian Empire in its heyday dealt with its opponents with its Golden Archers (Persian gold coins of the period had the figure of a bowman stamped on one side) to great effect and spared themselves devastating wars.
I am constantly struck by the small amounts of money it takes to purchase the friendship of some US politicians — even those of high rank. They accept paltry sums that would be insulting to any high-ranking government official in this part of the world.
US politicians are thankfully quite reasonable in their demands and we can pay them in US dollars thereby avoiding currency risk.
We must be careful because Israel’s friends in the US are way ahead of us in this game and will resent our meddling in what they consider to be their backyard. But, where there is a will there is a way.
We can rely on a charming habit of our American friends and allies which is their ability to make something illegal or immoral, legal and moral by simply calling it a different name and passing laws that make it legal. An example of this is calling bribes “soft loans”.
I believe that a sustained and (most importantly) discreet campaign of donations and contributions to the causes of democracy, human rights...etc. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) in the US will have a much better return on our investment than simply buying a bunch of ultimately worthless US securities and will cost us far less.
