Bush held hands with Saudi Princes as if he were a blushing bride. Obama has been castigated for “bowing” to the Saudi King. Yet almost everyone on both sides of the political aisle agrees that Saudi Arabia is a key ally of the United States in the Middle East. Why?
They support the most extreme brand of Islam, the equivalent of White Nationalist Identity Christianity in the US. They exploit their dominance of the world’s oil reserves to keep us dependent on fossil fuels, adding to the danger of global warming. They suppled most of the individuals who attacked us on 9/11 and they supply most of the “foreign fighters” in Iraq responsible for suicide bombing attacks on US troops and Shi’ite communities. Oh, and they covered up Al Qaueda’s involvement on the most deadly attack on American troops stationed on their soil, the 1995 bombings of the Khobar Towers. Yes, your read that right, they covered upo the complicity of Al Qaeda, pointing the finger at Iran, when all the evidence suggested it was their own homegrown Sunni fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who were responsible:
On June 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers
complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed United States Air Force personnel, killing 19 airmen and wounding 372.Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two US Embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene. […]
United States intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with US officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.
That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any US investigation of the bombing and to deceive the US about who was responsible for it.
The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’ite allies with the apparent intention of keeping US officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organizer.
And these are our friends and allies? These liars and deceivers. These despots with American blood on their hands. The regime whose ass we saved from Saddam Hussein in 1991. The regime that is the one of the most restrictive of individual liberty, one of the largest a violators of human rights, especially the rights for women, and the spreader of an ideology that has metastasized into Sunni fundamentalist terrorist groups that plague Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan among other countries. The regime which has members among the royalty who no doubt still support the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
Compared to Iran, these bastards have stabbed us in the back more times than you can imagine. They would like nothing more than to bleed us dry of our wealth and military power by attacking Iran, their religious and ideological enemy. Is protecting American oil companies access to the oil reserves of the Saudis really worth the price we as a country and a planet are paying in lives lost, in the past, the present and the future? Apparently too many of our politicians believe it is.
Do you?
Of course, we can thank Louis Freeh, FBI director as well for buying into this malarkey in order to further his vendetta against then President Clinton
Good old Bandar, ex officio member of the Bush family. Why am I not surprised.
From the beginning the Saudi royal family has been in business with Western oil companies. If they weren’t complicit in the business end of things, if profits weren’t flowing to the oil companies, the House of Saud would have been overthrown like Mossadegh. Maybe the balance of power isn’t quite what it is in other client states, but there is a consonance there.
As far as their embrace of Wahhabbism, it is the vehicle used by the dictatorship to maintain control of the population. It serves Big Oil’s interests too.
9/11? All of that happened to serve the purpose of the oil interests to invade Afghanistan and establish those pipelines and to attack Iraq and control those oilfields.
Long short, the Saudis aren’t our friends. They are partners with Big Oil, and Big Oil is not our friend. Granted, the House of Saud is too big to be controlled completely, but they’re acting just like Oil wants them to act. Even as America crumbles Big Oil stands astride the world.
keep in mind:
* Weapons are the Number One export of the U.S.
*
The Saudis use their petrodollar profits to purchase state of the art weapons, fighter jets, etc., from U.S. defense contractors. Sweeeet, huh?
Curious that with all their weapons, the U.S. military still had to go in and clean up the mess in Iraq. it’s pretty clear we are the servants of the House of Saud.
What are you talking about?
If you mean the “mess in Iraq” created by backing Hussein against the Iranians, well, from what I can tell that was the standard US/UK strategy of propping up right-wing dictators in an area against a perceived enemy. We’d screwed the pooch big time in Iran – what with that whole “toppling the legitimate democratically elected government because they wanted to make some money from oil” idiocy – and the standard US meddling strategy would be to find a tool and make him a buffer for Iran. Hussein was a great tool for a little while.
If you mean the “mess in Iraq” created by Bush the Elder and Saddam Hussein when they had a “miscommunication” that led Hussein to believe that attacking Kuwait would not lead to repercussions from the US – I doubt the House of Saud had much to do with it. The Bush family is in nearly as deep with the Kuwaiti royal family as they are with the Saudi royals. Plus Bush the Elder needed to buff up his war cred in order to tamp down on his “wimp” image (though he lost all the cred he gained from the bloodlust wing of his party when he decided to not push into Baghdad because it would become a giant mess).
Either way, I’m not sure what strings the House of Saud are supposed to be pulling with regards to Iraq. And giving them that much credit over our foreign policy in the area strikes me as tinfoil-hattery – the elites in the US do what they do because they want to do it (mostly because it’s profitable for them or it makes them feel like they have big dicks – and most of the time because of both reasons). The fact that our elites’ interests coincide with the House of Saud’s interests merely means that they’re a useful regime for the moment. Make no mistake – if the House of Saud decided that it was no longer in their best interest to fall in line with US elite interest their support would dissolve like so much sugar in hot water. And they know it too. Their situation in Saudi Arabia is so precarious that if the US withdrew support from them, they would be unlikely to stop a popular uprising (and the people of Saudi Arabia know it too – one of the myriad reasons the USA is so damn hated in Saudi Arabia is because of that).
Nations don’t have friends or enemies, only interests.
Until the US military is weaned off of oil, oil will be seen as a strategic commodity–much as Admiral Mahan saw coal to run naval vessels, a policy that brought a bunch of Pacific islands into American hands so that we could have “coaling stations”.
The major strategic military technology from here on is the ability to have local supplies of energy that go with the forces. That in part is what is meant by “greening the military”.
Until that happens, the countries with the most oil will get the most attention from the US; ergo, our friend Saudi Arabia. And those who oppose US power (whether for right or wrong reasons) will seek to deny a reliable flow of oil to the US military.
You see, the Saudis are our friends not because of the price at the pump but because without oil the US military (excepting carriers and submarines) cannot move.
Rail at it all you want but “energy independence” comes down to greening the military.
Unlike most Democrats, I was never against invading a country in the Middle East..
It just had to be the right one.
And the one that:
THAT is the country we should have invaded.
Saudi Arabia.
So, HELL NO, they’re not our friends.
Energy independence is the best way to handle Saudi Arabia and all the rest of those folks that have oil and aren’t our friends.
Hard to fund our enemies if oil is $40/barrell.
If anything could have been stupider than invading Iraq it would have been invading Saudi Arabia.
Just the tip of the iceberg:
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
Booman didn’t you write an excellent post about the Al-Qaida detainee who was relieved when tricked into believing he had been arrested by the Saudi Gov’t. And then gave a phone number to someone in the Royal Family…??
Release the 26 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report.