At Salon, Eric Boehlert with a look at “moderate” Saudi Arabia: Friends like these.

…much has changed in Saudi Arabia during the last 20 years. Once run as an opulent welfare state, where college graduates were virtually guaranteed cushy, 30-hour-a-week white-collar jobs, Saudi Arabia today is battling rising unemployment, particularly among young men. And the Saudis have too many young men (and young women). Nearly half the country’s 20 million citizens are under the age of 20, products of a baby boom during the country’s heady 1980s oil glory days. Saudi mothers bear an average of six children apiece, and the country’s annual population growth in recent years has hovered at about 4 percent, among the highest in the world.

The result is a growing number of discontented, educated natives who may present more of a danger than indigent populations do in neighboring countries. “Poor laborers are not the biggest problem. The problem are those with some education, the potential professionals,” says Voll. “Look at the description of the hijackers. They were Saudi middle-class wannabes who expected to be professionals and didn’t see opportunities they thought should be there. People like that are much more dangerous, and can do things peasants can’t do. Like blend into a Florida suburb.”