America’s $20 Billion Mistake
Sunni militants in Iraq are getting bolder and bloodier in their attacks against Shiites, and nothing is sacred. Less than a month ago, they attacked the shrine of Imam Asgari, the 11th Shiite Imam, who was also the father of Imam Mahdi, the Shiite messiah. These attacks on holy sites are particularly worrisome to the United States because they pack the emotional power that could trigger the outright civil war in Iraq that would utterly subvert the American effort to create a functioning Iraqi government and military.
Not only is the Saudi government refusing taking concrete action to stop the inflammatory provocation to Sunni terrorist groups – al-Qaida among them – to commit the attacks which are damaging prospects for peace and stability in Iraq. In fact, the Saudis have been the unpunished sponsors of terror in Iraq.
This fact became more clear-cut than ever with the eye-opening L.A. Times report earlier this month, revealing that about 45% of all foreign militants targeting both U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces hailed from Saudi Arabia.
Not only are religious clerics, Saudi banks, and Saudi individuals involved in such activities, according to an interview given by Prince Hassan of Jordan to Al Jazeera earlier this year — members of the Saudi National Security Council have been directly funding Sunni militants in Iraq.
The recent news that the US is considering selling $20 billion worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, smacks of short sightedness on the part of Washington. Instead of twisting Saudi Arabia’s arm to stop its sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq, the US is rewarding the regime with a massive arms contract.
It may be true that both countries harbor legitimate concerns about Iran’s growing military might. But by not forcing the Saudis to play ball in Iraq, the US is throwing away the results of four years of hard work and sacrifice in Iraq, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
In addition to infuriating the Shiites and encouraging the Sunni militants, the proposed Saudi arms deal has also legitimized Iran’s efforts in southern Iraq. By arming the Saudis, the Iraqi Shiites, whom the US counted on as potential allies, will now see Iran as their only true ally, and increase their military and political cooperation with Tehran.
What the US and the Saudis should also not forget is that Shiite populated areas such as Najaf and Muthana in Iraq border Saudi Arabia.
Should the US failure to stop Saudi Arabia’s sponsorship of terror, it will lead to more attacks against Iraqi Shiites, especially against shrines of Imam Ali and Hussein (sanctioned by the Saudi fatwas.) And instead of retaliating against Iraqi Sunnis and risking civil war, Shiite elements could start attacking Saudi border areas.
This could force up energy prices, thus damaging the US economy, while putting more money into the pockets of Iran, as 80% of its export income comes from the sale of oil.
The window of opportunity on reigning in the Saudis is closing. On July 19, a number of Saudi clerics, issued a fatwa calling for Sunni militants in Iraq, to attack the Imam Ali and Imam Hossein shrines in Iraq. Based in Najaf and Karbala, these are the two most important religious sites in the Shiite world.
Any attack against either site would make it very difficult to avert a massive Shiite backlash which could very well lead to civil war.
Now that the Al Qaeda militants, have the religious permission to carryout such a devastating blow, all they need is the right equipment and opportunity to carry it out. If such equipment arrives, one can almost count on the fact that it will be bankrolled by Saudi Arabia.
Since the start of the second Gulf war, many analysts and former politicians have accused the White House of acting in haste and without proper planning about the consequences of their moves. By rewarding the Saudis, rather than punishing them, it seems that the White House has still not learned from its past mistakes.
Meir Javedanfar is the co-author of the book %%AMAZON=0786718870 “The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran.%%” He runs Middle East Economic and Political Analysis (Meepas)
The Bush’s I have heard has oil interests in Saudia Arabia.
Jim – All the oil in the KSA is owned by the KSA (and thus in practice by the ruling family.)
However, oil is behind this… the whole world needs the Saudi oil, and all the major participants in the Global economy who need to import oil (which is pretty much everyone outside of Russia and maybe Canada and Norway) stay on working relationships with the house of Saud because of the oil.
Secondly, the US needs money as well as oil. With such a great private and public debt that the US has, and on top of that the significant trade deficit, the US needs to export something. If we didn’t sell them armaments – something at which we are state of the art – another country (Germany, Italy, France, Russia) would just step in and take the money.
So this whole protest by people against this deal is just not well thought through. We need them, they sort of need us, so we all deal.
freetoken is a great example of the conventional (wrong) wisdom. The Saudis will sell their oil on the open market to the highest bidder whether every politician takes their blood money or not. The Bushes have gone above and beyond for their Saudi masters.
The thing which drives me nuts is people thinking it’s only the Bushes who’ve been bought and paid for by the Saudis. It’s easy to buy American traitors of either party.
I have heard that the Saudis own 200 billion dollars of U.S. Treasury notes. That is some kind of clout.
But the main reason for this sale is because, short of an invasion of Iran, there are no other options for keeping Iran in check.
The Iranians keep tossing out these myths that they wish for nuclear power, although they haven’t built a nuclear power plant. They just keep enriching uranium till it reaches weapons grade levels.
They make it appear as if they only want to destroy Israel, when they really wish to intimidate and control the whole of the middle east and Europe. They wish for out and out war with the US. They are starting to fight with China.
Diplomatically, the UN is useless and Russia is uncooperative since Iran buys from Russia–talk about a trade deficit.
In chess, this is called a fork. And Iran is forking us really good.
Chip – what is the “wisdom” that is wrong in my post? I simply reiterated a list of *facts* that drive this whole issue.
Remind me again… Exactly what’s wrong with equipping one band of rabid barbarians ( the Sunnis ) with sophisticated weaponry so they can kill massive numbers of other rabid barbarians ( the Shiites ) …
Both sects of this violent Jihad religion of hatred are currently pitted against us and waging war in and on our societies — let’s help turn their murderous hatred back against each other — the Muslims should leave the rest of us alone and stop victimizing all other non-Muslims.
Ever since 9/11, I’m rather perplexed about the will of the West to survive. Our foolish leaders still call their bloody hate filled doctrine a “religion of peace”, and continue to retail the lie that the Jihadis are perverters of Islam and most of the Muslims of the world are against the Jihadis — this doesn’t comport with reality. Muslims are still allowed to freely practice their religion of sedition and insurrection on our soil where they continue to plot to harm and subvert us — has the West gone mad???
Our biggest mistake was allowing millions of Muslims to flood Europe, Canada, and the U.S. in the last three decades. Without this pool of terror apologists, terror financiers, and recruiters of terrorists in our midst, the Islamic Jihad would have little to no traction against the West, and Jihad would pose no real threat. Muslim hatred would be limited mainly to Muslim on Muslim atrocities — and that would be A GOOD THING.
While I detest the Nazi Saudi Regime, and would like to see them utterly flattened — I fully support this arms deal. It’s one of the first smart things Bush has proposed lately. I’d love to see the Saudis do our bidding in taking the Iranians down a notch or two — and get paid $20B to watch it. It brings capital back into the West where it was originally created and where it belongs, and probably augers ill tidings for the Shiite Nazis in Tehran.
The Muslims only offer up monsters as rulers — so we in the West have done our best to walk a tight rope dealing with such sinister leadership as Gul, Hussein, Mubarak, Saud, etc… We have done this in order to keep the oil flowing and the modern world functioning smoothly and efficiently.
If the war heats up, as it appears to be doing between the Shiites and the Sunnis, then we’d do well to finance BOTH sides until they squander themselves in their hatefest/bloodfest of Islam. Let the Muslims knock themselves out. Let’s aid them with all kinds of weaponry, and then aid them some more.
Geopolitical commentators don’t get that American and Russian foreign policies are all about selling arms. In the U.S. the arms industry relies on the government to sell its products. In this regard it is the only socialist industry in America. The State Department has a special division to carry out the sales. Russia sells to countries that the U.S. won’t sell to. All the political reasons given to justify arms sales are a smokescreen used to push sales. The best possible scenario for the arms business is to arm neighboring belligerent countries. For example the U.S arms both Israel and Egypt and Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the prefect sales multiplier are Russian arms sales to Syria and Iran. This develops an even greater insecurity in Israel and Saudi Arabia who come to the U.S. with their shopping lists. It’s almost like American and Russian arms manufacturers are tag team partners. All this has nothing to do with protecting Israel, bringing peace to the Middle East, confronting Iran or fighting terrorism. It’s all about bucks.
Thanks, Larry Shapiro, for parroting one of the most tired out leftist anti-American canards about U.S. arms sales.
The post above contains the identical formula that America bashers in Europe and acrosts the glove love to tirelessly trot out: The evil “Military Industrial Complex” canard.
The truth is this:
American arms sales and aid packages to the world amount to a PALTRY $9-10 Billion per year — and this is a generous estimate.
Plugging this number into the annual GDP of America — one finds that if the totality of arms packages to the world ceased today — the U.S. economy, which generates approximately $1.4 billion per hour in wealth, would take about 5-6 hours to cover the shortfall in terms of dollars.
It’s demonstrable that U.S. arms sales to the world are an utterly negligible part of our economy — despite the lies perpetuated by all of America’s detractors — domestic and foreign.
These detractors are nothing more than leftist liars who are bent on defaming America through lies and disinformation.
sorry — that should be “across the globe” !
We’re “rewarding” them by selling them arms, like they’re “rewarding” us by selling us oil. We could work to destabilize the Saudi regime, but I don’t think we’d like the end result.
In all honesty, the Saudis are using us, and we ae using them. Don’t like it? Neither do I. Got an alternative to Saudi oil? I didn’t think so.
I’d give this one an “F.”
Realistically, if we don’t sell Saudi Arabia the aircraft and other hardware, either Russia or China will. Pragmatically, at least this way we control the level of lethality of the weapons systems and the supply of spare parts. A hard fact to swallow but true.
I’d be the last to suggest that the US administration are a bunch of geniuses, but I suspect they have a pretty good grasp on the basic geography and the forces arrayed against us. Likewise, I’ve got to think that the Sauds are keenly aware of the problems on their northern border. After all, where do you suppose they’ll be deploying all their new military toys, hmm?
All the Saudi militants being exported to Iraq (where we’re getting pretty good at dropping the hammer on them) are not causing trouble in Saudi Arabia. They’re not causing trouble in Europe, and they’re not hatching their plots in the US. Is that a bad thing?