Saudi Arabia - a family holding company, not a friend.

I speak fluent Arabic.  I was the first professor of the Arabic Language and Middle East Studies at West Point where I was twice judged best classroom teacher and was offered permanent tenure which I declined not wishing to become a permanent school teacher rather than a soldier.

I have spent 40+ years working on or in the Middle East as an active duty US Army officer, diplomat, senior civilian DoD official responsible for intelligence on the Middle East, and South Asia and a business executive directly involved with places like Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was created by the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula after 1900 by tribes loyal to an extreme form of Wahhabi fanatic Islam based on the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam as reinforced by the extremist medieval scholar Ibn Taimmiya.  For him the only good non-Muslims were either slaves or corpses whose women had been taken as booty and distributed among the true Muslims.

The Saudi pseudo state remains largely motivated by the same ideas.  There is no constitution but Sunni Hanbali religious law.  There is no toleration of other than the official cult.  There are Shia Muslims in the Eastern Province but they are in constant danger from the regime.

The Al-Saud family (thousands great and small) run the place as their private holding.  Any talk of Saudi citizenship is a bad joke.  In SA there are; The Family, their toadies and flunkies, the Wahhabi Ulema, foreign guest workers and tribal, rural Arabs some of them migratory and others small town people.  This melange is held together by an effective police state that is restricted in power only by the royal prerogative.

Modernization? Hah! MBS has confessed to the brutal murder of Kashoggi.  The native masses, to the extent that they exist, have been intensively and exclusively conditioned with Ibn Taimmiya's views on the inherent enmity between the Faithful Wahhabi Sunni and the Kuffar (infidels, i.e. us).  The number of Saudi subjects of the king who are not horrified and disgusted by the West is trivially small.

The US has maintained a relationship with this conglomeration since 1944 when FDR met aboard a US cruiser in the Gulf with the creator of The Kingdom.  This symbiosis used to be justifiable on the basis of containment of the USSR and the oil of Arabia.  Neither of those necessities exist any longer.

Donald Trump is driven by  desire to sweeten the balance sheet of the US as well as a deluded belief in whatever it is that he thinks Israel stands for.   Israel seeks to manipulate the medieval barbarism of Saudi Arabia to further its fantasy of regional hegemony.  They should "wise up."

The Saudi who killed three people at Pensacola is representative of the breed.

It is time for a basic re-appraisal of our relationships in the ME.  pl

Comments

[turcopolier]

KH

In the end he can just tell the SS to f---k off. I would.

[Fred]

Babak,

It doesn't, but it sure seems a campaign of narrative crafting is going on around that shooting. A gambler with a drug problem and a girlfriend as aware of her surroundings as Omar Mateen's wife shoots a country music concert crowd killing 58 and two years later the FBI tells us "no clear motive".
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/29/689821599/fbi-finds-no-motive-in-las-vegas-shooting-closes-investigation

And just like James Hodgkinson, it is off to the memory-hole/conspiracy threory land. The idea proposed by Christy, which I've seen elsewhere, is less believable than political anger or even terrorism, but it is new with even more circumstantial evidence than the idea country music fans are Republicans, so it must have been political, which is an idea I've also seen floated.

[blue peacock]

None. Just as when all those who forecasted doom for the USD & Treasury bonds if the Chinese ever sold their dollar reserves. Well, they did, to the tune of hundreds of billions and the result - dollar rising and the Treasury bond market unperturbed. And what is not so well understood, is that Chinese did not draw down USD reserves because they wanted to but because they had to.

What those who don't understand trade finance don't get is that any product or commodity can be priced in any convertible currency and can be converted at will. Among convertible currencies none matches the dollars liquidity and depth. There's no other currency that even comes close. And there's no other market that finances trade anywhere close to the scale of the offshore eurodollar market. Why do you think the Fed has to open up swap lines every time there's a hiccup in the global financial system?

[J]

Colonel,

Speaking of 'not a friend', it appears there are Israeli intelligence connections to the Dem candidate Buttigieg through the law firm he used to work for. They have an office in Israel, and they appear to have brokered the sale of a U.S. sex club that was owned by a Damon Lawner who sold it to a private group called Circle which is probably an Israeli intelligence storefront. They're slated to have a big party in Miami this month, where all will be most likely recorded audio and visual by the Israeli intelligence apparatus in Miami, setting up more U.S. politicos for their Israeli intelligence blackmail operation.

One wonders if Mr. Buttigieg will be attending the Miami gala along with other Democratic party big wigs. Hmmm......

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snctm_(club)

https://www.mckinsey.com/il

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-12-06/pete-buttigieg-has-a-nondisclosure-agreement

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/love-sex/worlds-most-elite-sex-club-21032279

[Amir]

Apparently, one of wives of Clown Prince Muhammad Bone Saw, is Sahar Al Shamrani family. Likely she is related to the Pensacola Killer or at least comes from the same influential tribe. An average Saudi would never be trusted enough to be given “specialized” training by the Americans, for the fear of turning against the Al Saud clan. I don’t know enough about the country to comment more but hope that someone, with current knowledge about the internal Saudi tribal politics, can enlighten us about this “elite killer”.

[J]

Colonel,

Trump will be signing an Executive Order defining Judaism as a race/nationality not just a religion on Wednesday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/us/politics/trump-antisemitism-executive-order.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur

Last week Trump told Sheldon Adelson's Israeli American Council that "we have to" get Americans to "love Israel."

https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/1204533600537972736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[turcopolier]

J

This is a sad day. Perhaps Catholics could be declared an ethnic group as well.

[J]

Colonel,

Adam Schiff the Dem Chair of the House Intel Committee, on June 18, 2017 father's day did a say cheeze moment. The picture showed Schiff with his father, his brother, and what caught my eye was Schiff's son wearing a Mossad t-shirt. Which makes me wonder, if Schiff is a Mossad asset.

https://qanon.pub/data/media/585be54cd0b1d56bab4fe5204bc79904e313dfb00af6c70e61fd92dd46bc1922.jpg

[Amir]

They can be declared a religious minority but it would be difficult to market them as an ethnic group.

[John_Frank]

With respect, the New York Times report is wrong.

How Trump’s executive order on antisemitism originated in Harry Reid’s office https://t.co/1mUOXrvhqN?amp=1

A first look at the language of Trump’s executive order on antisemitism
https://t.co/5emgQEdH1h?amp=1

Trump's Redefinition of Jewish Identity That Wasn't
https://t.co/vWnSBiDI2i?amp=1

[Mina]

What is primitive is to allow the leaders of so-called democratic governments use politics in their speech and action, as those monkeys at the WH. They set an example for the rest of the world (because of their mighty army) and therefore it is impossible to stop the Messianic ME Bro spread their plague.
This is not to say that normal people cannot feel a need for religion and practice it, but it should not be allowed any publicity in the political sphere, and at least in the international political sphere, because it goes against the very principle of non-discrimination.

[J]

Colonel,

If the Sharia patrol types aren't real careful they'll have more than just one Brooklyn gang to contend with.

Brooklyn 'Muslim Community Patrol' confronted by infamous Bloods gang

https://www.wnd.com/2019/12/brooklyn-muslim-community-patrol-confronted-infamous-bloods-gang/