You know, the thing we needed was more anti Muslim rhetoric to really seal the growth of Islamic terrorists.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the Saudi’s biggest fan by a longshot. But SA is one country I REALLY don’t want to see destabilized. What they have is bad, what they are likely to end up with would be far, far worse.
Given how much they already support terrorism, and the likelihood that government officials were involved in 9/11, I’m not sure they can actually be much worse. Sanders is right. The bipartisan support for the Sauds is almost as slavish as the bipartisan support for Israel. Except that Israel is a democracy and a true ally. The Sauds are snakes.
Given the conclusions the report drew, I’m really curious what it is that the Saudis are so afraid of in those 28 pages. My gut reaction is, screw 'em, release those pages. No way do I want to see the US being held hostage by anyone, especially a titular ally.
No disagreement. But the game they play keeps the region stabalized and most of their population happy. Could it get worse - of course - imagine all that Saudi oil money in ISIS hands.
That’s the *realpolitik *angle, and I can see the logic, but it’s just too much for me to stomach. I’m not saying we should go to war with the Saudis, but just stop cozying up to them for a start.
It is a moral obscene thing to suggest that the United States of America, the greatest concentration of economic, military, and cultural power the world has ever known, the nation that split the atom and landed man on the Moon should not permit her citizens whose loved ones were the victims of the worst single atrocity in the history of the Republic and whose results still claims dozens of courageous firefighters, police officers, and first responders every year even to this day to litigate out of consideration for what is one of the most extreme, theocratic, and reactionary regimes on Earth-one that makes the Ottoman Empire or the Abbasids of old look like modern Scandinavia in comparison. It is a regime whose police shoved girls back into a burning school when they fled for not being properly covered up. No patriot can suggest that fair Columbia should degrade herself to a mere concubine in the seraglios of the degraded and degenerate princelings who rule this unhappy kingdom. Fuck them. They deserve the same fate as the Bourbons and the Romanovs and I trust the eternal justice of Providence that the day will come when the entire lineage of the Saudis shall be exterminated by the righteous rising of their long oppressed subjects in a letting of blood that would impress Madame Defarge. If permitting lawsuits against the Saudi regime should expediate this process, then it is but an additional reason for supporting it. It seems to me that even if a local branch of ISIS were to rise as a result of this it might be a lesser evil in the long run since 1) they would not have the same massive concentration of wealth and web of influence in high places throughout the West that the Saudis had and 2) their very obvious evil would provoke every man’s hand to rise against them as it already has in Syria and Iraq. Incidentally I might note that the only way you can claims this is “anti-Muslim rhetoric” is if you think Islam is automatically equivalent to the most reactionary form of Wahhabism.
I did not say it was anti-Muslim rhetoric. But I believe Muslims may take it that way.
And yes, the Saudi’s are horrible - but destabilizing the region is not likely to make it better. Not for women and schoolgirls. And not for the United States. Libya isn’t better without Gaddafi, Egypt isn’t better since the Arab Spring, and Syria is a nightmare.
Fuck 'em.
OTOH, nothing can be accomplished without it.
Why do you believe this?
Certainly both Obama and Elizabeth Warren have racked up some helpful pro-consumer changes (notably the 2011 formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), despite their failure to employ insulting remarks and intemperate accusations of the Sanders-speak variety (such as “This is another corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans”).
Obama and Warren have proven that it’s not necessary to vilify broad classes of people, in order to effect change. I wish Sanders would learn that lesson.
Just how do you think accomplishment happens? Is it just a matter of preaching loudly enough and long enough and denunciatorily enough that The Powerful come to realize what a-holes they’ve been, and reform themselves? Is that really it?
And all of the people who get stuck in the middle!