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From Council on Foreign Relations 2002:
For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda. And for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem.
From PBS-Frontline interview with Ali Al-Ahmed, executive director of the Saudi Institute :
Yes, I am saying that. Because the hijackers, 15 hijackers who are Saudis, they studied this thinking -- destructive thinking -- in Saudi Arabia. They spent a few months in Afghanistan. But they lived their life, they studied this in government mosques. They studied this kind of curriculum that I talked to you about. ... Government curriculum inspired what happened in New York.
From The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security:
Saudi government money funneled into madrassas where radical anti-Americanism is propagated has been instrumental in creating an ideological climate which generates terrorism.
From 2003:
Saudi Arabia continues to fund and export its Wahhabi brand of Islam, making it a "strategic threat" to the United States in the worldwide war on terror, the chairman of the U.S. government commission on religious freedom said yesterday.
"It is an ideology that is incompatible with the war on terrorism," said Michael Young, chairman of the State Department's Commission on International Religious Freedom.
From Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and the Spread of Sunni Theofascism June 2007:
American efforts to combat this contagion are hamstrung by the fact that its ideological and financial epicenter is Saudi Arabia, where an ostensibly pro-Western royal family governs through a centuries-old alliance with the fanatical Wahhabi Islamic sect. In addition to indoctrinating its own citizens with this extremist creed, the Saudi government has lavishly financed the propagation of Wahhabism throughout the world, sweeping away moderate interpretations of Islam even within the borders of the United States itself.
The Bush administration has done little to halt this ideological onslaught beyond quietly (and unsuccessfully) urging the Saudi royal family to desist. This lack of resolve is rooted in American dependence on Saudi oil production, fears of instability in the kingdom, wishful thinking about democracy promotion as an antidote to religious extremism, and preoccupation with confronting Iran.
And, regarding the Islamic Saudi Academy, in Virginia, in 2008:
Examples of Problematic Passages in Current ISA Textbooks
In a twelfth-grade Tafsir (Koranic interpretation) textbook, the authors state that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam), an adulterer..
A twelfth-grade Tawhid (monotheism) textbook states that “[m]ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible,” which in Islamic legal terms means that a Muslim can take the life and property of someone believed to be guilty of this alleged transgression with impunity. (Tawhid, Arabic/Sharia, 15) Under the Saudi interpretation of Islam, “major polytheists” include Shi’a and Sufi Muslims, who visit the shrines of their saints to ask for intercession with God on their behalf, as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.
Although this Koranic passage does not in itself invoke the term jihad, the Saudi textbook authors write:
Bush: Have you no shame or pride or backbone or balls at all?
God Damn It! You are the Fucking President of the Fucking United States of America! We may need their oil and their money, but can't you have the decency to preserve the diginity of the POTUS, if not for your miserable useless self, at least for those who follow?
3 comments:
I dunno. I don't think we have an alternative at this point in the ME to be allied with the Saudis. After Iraq has been stabilized for 10 years or so, maybe -- but I don't believe we can tell the Saudis to stick it at this point. And until we can, we can't really put much pressure on them, can we? The only option we have right now is pure soft power.
OBH,
I'm not sure what you mean when you say we're "allied" with the Saudis - other than accepting our money for oil, what are they doing that is not negative?
Though we import 60-70% of our oil, as I understand it only 11% comes from the Saudis. Yes I know it's a world market but I still don't see that we couldn't make adjustments that would give us more freedom of action.
And, as I said at the end of my rant, even is there is nothing we can do, does Bush have to so demean the office of POTUS by holding hands and kissing that son of a bitch? Don't those pictures just make you want to PUKE?
> other than accepting our money for oil, what are they doing that is not negative?
The have sway in ME politics well out of their weight class. We have bases there which we could not relocate, currently, anywhere else in that area. The Saudis on "our side" (granted, a very nuanced statement) is, at this point, still A Real Good Thing.
As I say -- after Iraq gets stabilized, we can almost certainly make deals with them which will allow us to shift and put pressure on the Saudis to stop funding Wahhabists. At this point, we can do little more than "Tsk, Tsk." them. Kinda like Obama wants to do to every enemy of the USA.
> as I understand it only 11% comes from the Saudis.
Heh, I haveen't looked into the dynamics of this but it's not JUST oil, as I note above. And 11% is a LOT more than you realize. Go look at how much of our oil supply was directly affected by Katrina, and note the spike that lasted about six months after that. Then tell me what you think the effect of a shift of 11% would be. Suppose you had to get 11% of your supermarket purchases somewhere else -- all your canned goods, or frozen goods, or whatever -- from some other place than where you've been getting them. Would that create issues? Annoyances? Problems, even?
One thing to realize is that the USA wasn't that close to the Saudis back when the Shah ruled Iran. That's one of the reasons we kept backing him to our eventual detriment. When he fell, we had to find a new base for expressing power in the ME region, and the Saudis were the most congenial. Given the ME, that wasn't saying a lot, even though it says a lot.
> by holding hands and kissing that son of a bitch?
Doesn't look to me like he's inhaling...
:oP
Quips aside, I'm not going to argue about statecraft and conventions. It's not like he's smooching with him, it looks to me as though his lips are pursed hard together, like he's not happy about the political need which has him have to appear friendly with the guy. That's the first thing I saw when I looked at that photo.
Remember, "Politics makes strange bedfellows".
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One of the first things I try and ask myself when wondering about "Why does 'x' work like that?" is to think about
a) The money
b) The ramifications
c) The money
d) Inertia
e) The money
f) Human Nature
g) The money
Usually, the answer is somewhere in a mix of those options.
I think we do need to get ourselves out of the hands of the Saudis. But it's not something we can do quickly. And Iraq, hopefully, will be a good step in that direction, among all the other things it potentially is.
Once we don't need them for bases, we can start to pressure them to stop funding Wahabbist crap.
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