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For decades, under presidential administrations of both parties, the US government has been in bed with Saudi Arabia, giving them military and diplomatic protection in exchange for Saudi crude, that sweet black gold. American oil companies have made out like bandits here, and American arms dealers...I'm sorry, defense contractors, have profited immensely off of selling tons of weapons of war to Saudi Arabia, which they have been destroying Yemen with (with US support, naturally). They are a bulwark against Iran (or so we are told) and are allegedly a "stable ally" in the region (or again, so we are told). And yes, they invest heavily in the US domestically, both in government bonds and in US companies....
Yet the Saudis have never been truly held accountable for their open sponsorship of Wahhabist Islam - a major ideological basis for jihadists like Osama bin Laden and those who supported him, and who continue his "life's work", so to speak, in the forms of Al-Qaeda and ISIS and their many affiliates -, in no small part due to their extensive lobbying apparatus in Washington, London, and elsewhere in which they've essentially bought-off "our" representatives, resulting in high-level business and government friendships between the respective elites of the Western world and the Kingdom. Talk about conflicts of interest!
If Saudi Arabia is in many ways the sugar daddy of the Salafi-Sunni jihadist (terrorist) groups and their fellow travelers in mosques and madrassas around the world, then the US, in turn, is the sugar daddy of Saudi Arabia. And while yes, those same terrorists are rebellious, violent stepchildren who seek to bring down the House of Saud for their blatant hypocrisy and double-dealing as they give to the terrorists with one hand and to the Western countries with the other, don't count on the corrupt, vicious, yet pathologically and structurally insecure House of Saud to be anything but a DE-stabilizing force in the Middle East. In this sense, supposed Boy-Prince Wonder Reformer Mohammed "Bone-Saw" Bin Salman ("MBS") has merely accelerated the destabilization in what is both a cynical power grab and a sincere attempt to save Saudi Arabia from itself - which to the House of Saud, means preserving THEIR rule in perpetuity. I'm not convinced it will work.
My point being: If Saudi Arabia can't or won't be held accountable for 9/11, what makes anyone think that they'll be held accountable for murdering Jamal Khashoggi, destroying Yemen, blockading Qatar, or "disappearing" countless Saudi dissidents? Presidents of both major parties from FDR onward have steadfastly stood by the Kingdom and stood by as the Kingdom has recklessly sponsored terrorism, tortured and murdered dissidents, all but enslaved women and their mostly foreign labor force, murdered LGBT folks, helped radicalize and destabilize the Islamic world, and acted as a poster child for a hopelessly corrupt, hypocritical, and backward absolute monarchy. And in doing so, the US-Saudi alliance is a poster child for the insanity of US foreign policy.
The reality is this. Saudi Arabia has the forth largest military budget in the world. They buy most of their arms from the USA. I guess a lot of sin can be forgiven when the money keeps rolling in. In my mind, this is a travesty of the current and last two Presidential Administrations.
The reality is this. Saudi Arabia has the forth largest military budget in the world. They buy most of their arms from the USA. I guess a lot of sin can be forgiven when the money keeps rolling in. In my mind, this is a travesty of the current and last two Presidential Administrations.
Agreed, but as I said...it goes back to FDR. Though in regard to 9/11 specifically, yes, it's George Bush the Younger, Obama, and now Trump who have been derelict in their duty here...
Also, for the Trump supporters (or Obama supporters, conversely) who object to what I said: it's not about the party or the individual President. It's much more systemic - the "Saudi problem" goes way beyond whoever the President happens to be at any given time. As does a lot of bad US policy, both foreign and domestic, unfortunately...
Both Trump and Obama are, in more ways than either side would care to admit, continuations of what has been happening for many decades...
Yes, but as I said...Trump is FAR from alone on that score.
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