Saudi Arabia churns out holy warriors by the batch load, either directly or through the subsidies it gives for radicalized sectarian education throughout the world. But now the King feels threatened by them. Maybe he shouldn’t have financed them in the first place. Maybe he should have cracked down on people in his kingdom who finance the worst of the worst of these holy warriors.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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El Tri is up on the Oranje 1-0…
Yeah, I’m all-in for Mexico now.
CONCACAF, suckers!
1-1 now
PK, so now it’s 2-1 Oranje.
And maybe the US should have launched an Apollo Project level effort to attain more energy independence after the oil embargo of 1973. Damn me, my country gets into wars and allies itself with some of the worst people in the world simply because our pols on both sides of the aisle are comfortably in the pockets of Big Oil.
Jimmy Carter tried that. Even formed the Department of Energy to that end.
Didn’t really work, mostly because the monied interests and mindless sheep have been trying to dismantle it ever since.
And Carter became the poster child for ineffective failed presidencies.
But history has proved he was right.
Carter was right, about nearly everything that mattered, thirty years before anyone else in Washington. And for his sins we threw him out for a two-bit Hollywood actor who had a pretty good gig playing the governor of California.
Reagan was likeable. Carter not so much. Americans are suckers for fantasy and can’t handle the truth.
True enough. Reagan played the part probably better than any president in the 20th century. Whatever we might think of his actual accomplishments as president, he knew how to hit his marks and deliver his lines.
Maybe Carter didn’t have the charisma or the showmanship, but at least he was a competent chief executive. And he tried to do what was best for our country. At least I think he did, which is more than I can say for any president since.
The only people I’ve known that can appreciate and clearly see this:
are or have been actors. One of my fears is that the rightwing will one day find an A+ list actor.
You mean like barack Obama, right?
Let us pray that they don’t.
Let us pray.
AG
He’s not even a very good speaker. So no, not like Barack Obama. He succeeds because the talent pool among politicians is weak.
I think Obama’s a way better president than Carter ever was. Do you recall the rape and murder of the Maryknoll nuns in El Salvador? Carter suspended aid to El Salvador before flip flopping and reinstating it. His Secretary of State went before Congress and said the women had been responsible for their own deaths.
I view Carter as a hypocrite. He spoke of human rights but when it came right down to it, he turned a blind eye to the most egregious abuses. Not that he’s worse than most other presidents. But I do not get why people cut Obama no slack while looking back at Carter through a fuzzy haze of idealist gauze.
Only discussing the acting chops of politicians here. Not their policies or how they respond to events.
In fairness to Carter, he never claimed to be a liberal never had the backing of the Democratic caucus in Congress, and only served one term. That said, he flubbed Iran and really screwed up in Afghanistan (a policy that Reagan continued). He did secure a peace agreement and didn’t overtly or covertly, or attempt to topple regimes in several countries. And in his one term, secured minimum wage increases which Obama in five and a half years has failed to do.
Reagan was a posing fool. A bad actor. Carter was a good man. He wasn’t acting. The media always goes for the false. Goodbye, Carter.
AG
The King has access to all 21st century weapons. The west has trained his people to use this stuff of war. It is time for the Saudis to put it all to use. Same thing for the king of Jordan….put the planes in the air and take control if they feel threatened.
No change:
KSA has been deporting “terrorists” that threaten the kingdom for decades. Often funneling money to them to stay away and wreak havoc somewhere else.
Remittance terrorists. What a concept.
Called scholarships to those study at western universities for some when young men are particularly vulnerable to the romanticism is being warriors. Keeps them out of KSA for a few years and might westernize them enough that their youthful ardor for war wanes.
So if you encourage radicalism, it eventually turns on you. Who would’ve guessed?
Now biting the GOP’s butt. However, they aren’t noted for their high level thinking.
Gosh, that’s never happened before. I mean, La Terreur didn’t happen at all, ever. My modest understanding is that the Saudi royalty simply pays off the extremists in return for having Wahhabi mullahs provide them with a cloak of legitimacy.
This has been going on for generations. The Saudi Royal family contested for power in the region for many years, contesting with Ottoman rulers, the Egyptians and other local rivals. They gained and lost power. In 1915, they allied with the British who were masters of ruling through the stroking of local rivalries, much the way Republicans try to turn poor people against each other.
By the 1920s, the Saudis were already playing footsie with the Wahabis as a means of legitimizing themselves, particularly since they were seen by many as puppets of the British. For many years now they’ve been our puppets. The only place the show any real independence has been in allowing the Wahabis to preach hate against the U.S. and the west in general. Perhaps we’ve largely turned a blind eye because we saw this as a means for the Saudis to keep themselves in power.
Do you think he’d still be king if he had done any differently? It’s not as though the House of Saud is beloved within its own kingdom. The Wahabis have the real run of the place. Defeating them is a tall order.
Slightly O/T, but what 5 year old made that video, and how can I get a job for The Hill or whoever made that? My editing is LIGHT YEARS beyond that garbage.
For all my liberalism I was not against a war in the Middle East. But, it had to be the right country. And the right country was the country that gave us the mastermind behind 9/11; the country that gave us 15/19 of the terrorists; the country that subsidized the spreading of the Islam- wahabbi – that is the root of the spreading of jihad-
That country is Saudi Arabia.
Would have had absolutely no problem with invading it.
Yiu would’ve had a problem when the U.S. economy precipitously tanked as Saudi oil became prohibitively expensive.
It’s all quid pro quo out there, rikyrah.
All of it.
AG
Not after we took the Saudi oil like we took the Iraqi oil.