Editors note: This is not to inslut anyone in Saudi Arabia. We actually have some friends who lived there or work/ed there.
We personally believe that this will go down as the biggest foreign policy blunder in history.
From an idealistic point of view, Saudi Arabia is a brutal, totalitarian regime, which has used military force to help the apartheid regime in Bahrain. The term apartheid was invented in South Africa, where the minority whites ruled the blacks. Therefore Bahrain, which is 80% shia controlled by the 20% sunni would also qualify as an apartheid regime.
From a realistic point of view, this is possibly the dumbest idea ever concocted. The king of Saudi Arabia is 86, his successor is 78. The US is selling Saudi Arabia in reality close to $90 billion of advanced weaponry. Apparently, the Administration has not learned the lesson from Egypt. America supplied Egypt with weapons for 30 years, and then within 18 days the country collapse, and fanatics took over. Now Egypt has a million man army with advanced American tanks and planes. The ‘moderate’, dispensable, Elbaradei who has zero support in Egypt has even threatened to go to war with Israel. Any day the Saudi regime could fall and become hostile. Egypt has no enemy, it is bordered by Sudan, Libya and Israel. Yet the Obama administration still sold weapons even after Mubarak fell! If Obama’s goal is to advance peace in the middle east, he is clearly not doing a great job.
One small point: Notice how all the opponents of foreign aid never mentioned Egypt once or even care about this deal to sell weapons to Saudi (basically for war against Iran), only Israel, Israel, Israel. Ron Paul where are you?
Now we will try to present the ‘rationale’ for this move:
There are three ways to look at the Obama administration’s historic arms deal with Saudia Arabia announced earlier today: Through the lens of geopolitics, domestic politics, or both. But one thing’s for sure: A decade ago, the idea of giving the country that birthed the 9/11 hijackers 84 new Boeing F-15 fighter jets would get laughed out of Congress. “A deal like this would have simply inflamed the foam-at-the-mouth crowd,” the Council on Foreign Relations’ Thomas Lippman tells Christian Science Monitor. “They must have calculated that it won’t.” The package also includes upgrades to 70 other jets, Joint Direct Attack Munitions and the sale of 72 Black Hawk helicopters, 70 Apaches and 36 Little Birds, reports The Wall Street Journal. Congress signed off on the $60 billion deal, the largest overseas arms deal in history, last year but only now has the Obama administration forged a deal. Why now? Here are the different theories:
It’s about intimidating Iran “Its timing is laden with significance, with tensions over Iran mounting and the United States pulling its last soldiers out of Iraq,” reports The New York Times. “The administration announced the sale during a week when Iranian officials threatened to close the strategically vital Straits of Hormuz in response to indications that the United States planned to impose tough sanctions on Iranian oil exports.” Going into more detail, The Washington Post notes that Saudi Arabia, “which has a predominantly Sunni Muslim population, and Iran, mostly Shiite, have competed for regional influence for decades, and the Obama administration has sought to bolster its security relationship with Riyadh, despite their differences over the response to the Arab Spring.”
