Comments on: The Blame Game – ‘Oil or Bust’ Edition http://www.deadissue.com/archives/2007/07/17/the-blame-game-oil-or-bust-edition/ At home drawing pictures of mountaintops Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:15:55 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Al Swearengen http://www.deadissue.com/archives/2007/07/17/the-blame-game-oil-or-bust-edition/comment-page-1/#comment-21899 Al Swearengen Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:42:16 +0000 http://deadissue.com/archives/2007/07/17/the-blame-game-oil-or-bust-edition/#comment-21899 I think it really comes down to our policy of placing business interests before security interests. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, there would actually be leverage we could use in forcing the Saudis to crack down on this. Because we've got no cards left besides ones we'd be insane to play (nukes), there's no incentive for for any country, let alone Saudi Arabia, to bend to our will. To get N. Korea on a path to disarmorment, we had to bribe them. Look at the tit-for-tat in terms of import/export of consumables with China...they hold leverage against us, and that has generally not been the position we've historically had to bargain from. I think it really comes down to our policy of placing business interests before security interests. If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, there would actually be leverage we could use in forcing the Saudis to crack down on this. Because we’ve got no cards left besides ones we’d be insane to play (nukes), there’s no incentive for for any country, let alone Saudi Arabia, to bend to our will.

To get N. Korea on a path to disarmorment, we had to bribe them. Look at the tit-for-tat in terms of import/export of consumables with China…they hold leverage against us, and that has generally not been the position we’ve historically had to bargain from.

]]> By: Karl http://www.deadissue.com/archives/2007/07/17/the-blame-game-oil-or-bust-edition/comment-page-1/#comment-21898 Karl Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:02:12 +0000 http://deadissue.com/archives/2007/07/17/the-blame-game-oil-or-bust-edition/#comment-21898 I think 15 of the 9/11 high jackers were saudis? It is interesting that Saudi Arabia produces so many Jihadis as the country seems like it offers quite a bit of opportunity to its citizens, yet they still seem to hate the US. I wonder if the problem doesn't have something to do with feeding the population a steady diet of fundamentalist intolerance. Somewhere I was reading that the problem with religion is that it crates unrealistic expectations, that is nothing can compare with the heaven that someone can imagine, so everything else is going to be a dissapointment. Maybe in the case of Saudi Arabia, nothing here on earth can compare to the 40 virgins(Sounds more like 40 drama queens to me) that they promise to jihadis so they are happy to go get thier ultimate reward. Whatever the psychology it seems incredibly messed up and the current US policy of never critisizing Saudi Arabia, regardless of how many public executions they have or how many terrorist orginizations they fund makes the problem worse. I think 15 of the 9/11 high jackers were saudis? It is interesting that Saudi Arabia produces so many Jihadis as the country seems like it offers quite a bit of opportunity to its citizens, yet they still seem to hate the US. I wonder if the problem doesn’t have something to do with feeding the population a steady diet of fundamentalist intolerance.

Somewhere I was reading that the problem with religion is that it crates unrealistic expectations, that is nothing can compare with the heaven that someone can imagine, so everything else is going to be a dissapointment. Maybe in the case of Saudi Arabia, nothing here on earth can compare to the 40 virgins(Sounds more like 40 drama queens to me) that they promise to jihadis so they are happy to go get thier ultimate reward. Whatever the psychology it seems incredibly messed up and the current US policy of never critisizing Saudi Arabia, regardless of how many public executions they have or how many terrorist orginizations they fund makes the problem worse.

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