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Originally Posted by nikimcbee
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Originally Posted by Skybird
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Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth
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Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
THe Saudis are not to be trusted. THe Majority of their country hates the US, and they even refuse to buy US products at all, except weapons. One day, you will be fighting the weapons you sold the Saudis if you give it to them now. You can bet on that.
-S
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I agree. But we've already sold them AWACs, F-15s, late model AMRAAMs, JDAMs, and M1A2s. We will sell F-35s to the Israelis, perhaps even F-22s. Saudi Arabia will demand the F-35, and there is a decent chance they will get it. I hope our legislators would be smarter than that, but we shall see.
PD |
Yes, all true. Much of the deals was done in response to the Kuwait war '91, and to counter the "Iraqi threat." Now there is Iran being raised as the threat by which one will excuse to sell the Saudis what they want (it already goes like this). Moral of the story: defense policies serve to sell defense goods, and selling defense goods knows neither loyalty nor patriotism. Ergo modern defense policies knows neither loyalty nor patriotism, neither reason nor shame.
So, today's practices are just the logical outcome of defense policies lacking any logic. |
What! An Islamic country would never attack another Islamic country! They are just all warm fuzzies  . |
You are wrong. Ever heared of the Islamic civil war? The confrontation between Shias and Sunnis, lasting since centuries, is the one thing that totally dominates things in the Middle East, compared to it the Palestinian issue, often in the West focussed on as being the primary issue, is meaningless. And the major powers representing Shias and Sunnis are - the Sunni Arabs of Saudi Arabia, and the Shia Persians of Iran. This old conflict lies behind all of the tension there is. A symptom for it is the Sunni Arab resistence to the Iran-supported Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is NOT a friend of the Hezbollah - they tryx to get rid of it by financing their own Sunni factions and parties and getting Washington to do something about them short of war. You may have noted that the Arabs are remarkaby silent whenever Israel reaches out for the Hezbollah. Israels serves their interests when doing so.
As long as you have this century-old conflict not being settled, you will have neither peace nor order in the region - no matter wjhat becomes of the Palestinians. Almost all Arab nations have made their peace with Israel for the time being, realising that the existence of Israel does not mean a threat to their nations' existence and ruling factions'/leaders' claim for power within their countries.