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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (238636)	8/2/2007 4:22:21 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I'm always amazed when the US government says the Saudis are our allies in the region. Where do they think the fanatical behaviour of the poorer regions of Pakistan and Afgahnistan comes from? A peasant in the mountains isn't going to naturally be inclined toward extremism, he's got to be taught it somewhere, and where do the funds which teach the extremism originate - Saudi Arabia. You could argue from watching the behavior of the two countries that the US has been the client state of the Saudis as much or more as the Saudis have been the client state of the US. For how many years did Prince Bandar sit in Washington like a Roman proconsul and successfully demand that the US send amateur ambassadors the the Kingdom who didn't even speak Arabic, to make sure that nobody got in his way? And all the while, the US State Department made the Saudi alliance the lynchpin of their ME policy and turned a blind eye to the Faustian bargains the House of Saud made with the Wahabbis. You gotta give the House of Saud due credit, they know where to spend their money. I think the hope of extricating the US from the clutches of this relationship was one of the real but unspoken motives for the invasion of Iraq - the hope to introduce a positive change in the Arab world, and create a new situation that would allow the US to step away from KSA. Certainly nobody can touch Saudi Arabia itself. They have educated a whole generation (& it's a huge baby boom) in Wahabbi fanaticism and nothing practical. Elections in KSA would probably vote in Osama bin Laden.