COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY PHILIP GIRALDI IN UNZ REVIEW
“America’s Unreliable Friends: Today’s Allies Are Tomorrow’s Enemies"
As usual, Philip Giraldi provides good writing and food for thought.
"but the Alshamrani [Pensacola] incident suggests that there is more dissidence bubbling beneath the surface than is apparent from the rosy assurances about The Kingdom coming out of the White House and the Royal Palace in Riyadh."
Indeed. It is a very conservative country dominated by a very conservative branch of its religion.
Those are real forces inside any society and things which do not evolve or change with any speed.
We have to think in terms of lifetimes.
And the country’s leadership, the House of Saud, is not part of the region’s ancient, stable history but a relatively new addition, going back only a decade or so before Israel’s founding. It really represents another interloper.
I am sure many ordinary Saudis are offended at the increased American presence in their country, representing, as it does to them, a sacred place like no other.
And the new close cooperation with Israel, acting much as allies, while largely kept secret, couldn’t help but offend some who would become aware of it.
Playing with fire? Quite possibly. There may already have been some unknown events in Saudi Arabia with the mysterious murder of the King’s faithful chief bodyguard and a fire at the new Jeddah high-speed rail station recently plus the sending of significant new American forces, likely as bodyguards more than as countering any (nonexistent) threat from Iran.
"In 2015, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon explained how Israel might have to strike Iran hard to prevent a long war. He cited the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki..."
I am reminded of a remark Hitler once made about whether anyone even remembered the Armenian genocide.
America is playing dangerous games with dangerous people.
Instead, it should be the one to represent and enforce the rule of law in the region.
But it cannot do so because Israel is something like an undeveloped Siamese twin attached in vital ways to America’s body.
Israel exhibits no respect for the rule of law, caring only for narrowly-defined interests of control and expansion. We must never forget for the long-term, no matter what Israel does for temporary advantage, those five or six million Palestinians aren’t going anywhere.
Of course, the relationship with Saudi Arabia derives in many ways from the relationship with Israel. The Crown Prince is seen in Israel as part of a new relationship with the region, almost a parody of making good neighbors out of old enemies.
The Crown Prince has done so many dirty deeds to ingratiate himself with Israel (and, ergo, the United States), from the horrors in Syria to the horrors in Yemen. He has earned Israel’s good will, so much so that it supported the sale of tens of billions in American armaments to the Crown Prince, something it would never have done in the past.
It’s the kind of sale Trump loves, believing he’s making America richer and spreading American influence in the region, all while crowing about his own incomparable “salesmanship,” but that’s a very superficial view.
Such weapons are nothing on which to build a future. They only increase overall uncertainty and risk. Just look at what they encouraged the Crown Prince to do in Yemen, earning himself surprise attacks and a very prominent black eye, adding to everyone’s sense of greater instability.
Without even touching on the unwarranted hostility against that major, ancient country of Iran, the United States is doing nothing helpful or creative in the region. It is building only the possibility for more war and destruction, a badly distorted mirror image of China’s efforts abroad to build infrastructure, promoting trade and prosperity for billions of people.
