JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AUTHOR ASKS FAIR QUESTION: WILL SAUDI ARABIA BECOME NEXT FAILED STATE? - BUT WHEN HE MENTIONS POTENTIAL THREAT FROM ISIS OR AL QAEDA HE LITERALLY BABBLES - WHAT ISIS REALLY IS - THE PURPOSES AND NATIONS IT SERVES FAITHFULLY - ATTACK ON AN IRANIAN MILITARY PARADE AND A GLARING TRUTH REVEALED IN IRAN'S REPRISAL - THE FOLKS WHO GAVE YOU OVER A HALF MILLION DEAD IN SYRIA

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LAZARRE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS



“Is Saudi Arabia the Middle East’s Next Failed State?”  



I like some of the collection of anecdotes.

As for the Ibn Khaldun theme, it might equally have been taken from other historical figures.

It is an ongoing theme because it clearly has a lot of truth in it.

Not everyone would agree with the number of generations required, but a general pattern has been observed that the generations succeeding the vigorous founders of any dynasty tend to become corrupt or simply enfeebled over time.

We even see this with powerful family dynasties, families which are not the rulers of countries but are captains of industry and commerce.

When we get to the threat of ISIS or al Qaeda for Saudi Arabia, I disagree completely with the author.

The vision of these outfits offered here is just one more iteration of the official American narrative. Disinformation, whether innocently repeated or not by the author.

ISIS has never, not once, attacked the very targets that would come most naturally to them were they indeed what America and its allies claim.

Those targets are Israel and its interests and the corrupt Saudi Princes and their interests.

No, instead this supposedly wild-eyed bunch of jihadi-types has busied itself with people whom Israel regards as enemies for the most part, and whom Israel regards as an enemy, whether legitimately or not, Washington, ipso facto, regards as an enemy.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some weird jihadi types in the herd, but they have never run things. They are an inevitable result of creating such a group, financing it, and putting out calls for recruits from all over the world. The military and the security services have used this technique many times now in many places, as they did in Libya.

In Afghanistan, the United States avoided a lot of ground fighting by aligning with the Taleban’s arch rival, the Northern Alliance, cutthroats indistinguishable from the Taleban except in being their opponents in vying for power. America mostly supplied them with an air force, killing a lot of innocent civilians in the effort. It then violently occupied strategic points.

Who were the people Israel regarded as enemies? The government of Syria and the previous administration in Iraq. Interesting, to say the least.

Suddenly a few years back, ISIS showed up riding around in the desert in brand new Toyota pick-up trucks and waving AK-47s.

Who bought the trucks? Who supplied the weapons? Who paid their salaries and bought their food?

When they went to first attack some Iraqi tanks – an impossible task with pick-up trucks and light weapons, no matter how many you claim to have beheaded in an effort to scare people – the tank operators simply left their tanks and fled, supposedly because they were so terrified. Clearly, they had been paid off to do so, likely by the Saudis. So, that gave ISIS some serious weapons, and away they went from there.

When ISIS turned towards Iraq’s capital, the head of government disliked by both the United States and Israel, fled. Later ISIS turned back to Syria to complete its main task of helping foreign interests topple the government and maybe divide the country.

A good deal of American and British bombing of ISIS a few years back was anything but. They were almost providing ISIS with an air force in their attacks on Syrian infrastructure. Later, at various places, Americans really did bomb some ISIS, reflecting undoubtedly a combination of their having exceeded their brief and of the disposable nature of such rag-tag mercenaries. And ISIS excesses, intended to create fear and loathing in their theater of operation, created a very negative public backlash in parts of the West. There is, of course, no honor nor much loyalty in such dirty schemes. The Mafia demonstrates the same standard of behavior in our civilian experience.

Limited amounts of poison gas agents were also supplied to some of these mercenaries. There was an incident, a discovery which was quickly covered up, at the Turkish border once, a transshipment point. We also know from the incomparable investigative reporter, Sy Hersh, that Hillary Clinton was involved in a scheme to take small amounts of poison gas from the murdered Qadhafi’s stocks in Libya and have them shipped to these guys in Syria. The idea was to give Obama his “red line” excuse to bomb the crap out of Syria as he had done Libya. Only some clever Russian diplomacy prevented him.

The whole business at Benghazi, the truth always having been suppressed, was about a scheme to collect weapons and cutthroats to be shipped from the chaotic induced-horror of Libya and to be sent into Syria to create more of the same.

It all went terribly wrong, as can happen when you deal secretly with bloody thugs, and some of the cutthroat types the American State Department was dealing with preferred an American Ambassador as a ready target of opportunity. Who knows what their aims were, but the result was clear enough.

Of course, America is not, any time soon, going to explain that Hillary Clinton’s State Department was responsible for its own ambassador’s death. Anymore than they are going to explain sending small quantities of poison gas to rag-tag mercenaries in Syria to kill people just to open a window of opportunity for a whole lot more killing in a massive bombing campaign Obama would have launched.

Saudi Arabia and its associates, have had a little "club" for more than a half dozen years, a club dedicated to toppling a legitimate and reasonably popular government just because it doesn’t toe the line on American policy in the region. The “club” includes the United States, Israel, Britain, and France. Turkey was also part of the group originally. They are responsible for the terror and war in Syria. All the hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of desperate refugees.

Time and again, the Syrian Army has unearthed weapons’ caches of Israeli-made and American-made armaments as it advances and captures areas.

As they have for other terror outfits, such as al Nusra, an outgrowth of al Qaeda. Israel has been observed many times actually treating al Nusra fighters at hospitals in Israel near the border.

Britain and the United States financially supported the White Helmets, a phony NGO operation closely associated with al Nusra. We know they are associated both from some hard-working independent journalists and from Russian military sources. Moreover, Israel recently busied itself with extracting a large bunch of them from a region about to fall to the Syrian Army, along with, it so happens, a group of other mysterious Israeli operators.

The United States has been observed several times, transshipping in helicopters, leaders of some of these groups from areas that were falling to Syrian government forces.

We actually have photos of John McCain, America’s premier promoter of war and terror in the Middle East, at a meeting with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even what we know of al-Baghdadi’s biography is mysterious, leaving many questions about just whom he works for and who protects him, his having once been a prisoner of the United States, perhaps having been turned to work for them.

In Iran’s recent successful missile attack in eastern Syria against ISIS, the organization having taken credit for the attack on an Iranian military parade, it has been noted that the ISIS base attacked is just a very short distance from an (illegal) American base. Coincidence? I think not.

Moreover, it is interesting to ask why ISIS would be attacking Iran, fellow Muslims and people who are definitely in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel? That is not what jihadi-types do. Iran’s successful launch of the missiles went beyond reprisal. It signaled that Iran now has extremely accurate missiles, having landed them on a target a short distance from American troops, and the United States did not even attempt to shoot them down since it was apparently unaware of them.

No, I don’t think these outfits represent any threat to Saudi Arabia.

And now that Israel and Saudi Arabia are virtually covert allies, sharing many interests in the region, this is even more true. The main interest of both these governments is protecting their privileged positions in the region. Both are, in a sense, outsiders, interlopers with big money behind them, the Saudi Royal family having no great long history and being viewed by many as occupying opportunists, not all that different to Israel’s own circumstances with its Washington backers.