Rice unveils plan to send $billions in military aid to Middle East

[peterloo]

Mmm... Arms support ... What I can imagine is the military balance being broken and the radical Islams retribute - by terrorist attacks (of course)

Futhermore, oil is a key factor for prosperity in America in long term. If America provides the arms to her allies, she must be demanding something in return. "There's no free lunch", right?

Motives (just some wild guesses, but reason-based)
(1) Secure oil bases in Middle-East
(2) Use them as the main force in combating those terrorists and cut American casualities (thus leaving less troubles for Bush, who is "almost" abondoned by his people)
(3) use up the bulk of out-dated arms (remember, the F-14 are now scapped like a paper in a shredder, for the fear of Iran acquiration of these arms. Should they be sent to allies, Iran will not be able to get access to them)
(4) Making friends and remaining a good relation don't hurt / backfire, do it?

[SUBMAN1]

Most ideas present in this thread are crack smoking ideas with little thought or basis behind them.

Arming a friendly nation has nothing to do with terrorism. To do so is to say that giving or buying American product is to fund Islamic radicals. Yes - there are some sympathizers in this country as well as any other country and buying their product might ultimately end up in the hands of fundamentalists. We give these very same people the oppurtunity to buy weapons, which may end up in fundamantalists hands. And the point is?

Not sure what you guys are thinking here but the Suadies have criminal elements in their society like ours - that is not a debate. To say that the government funds those ideologies is very much another thing. It is similar to putting blinders on a horse. The country has money flowing out of it that is and can be used by people who may do us harm - but this is by the civilian population. However, the weapons the US is supplying cannot 'ever' be used by these same terrorists organizations. The type of weapons? And example is JDAM bombs. Hello people? When does a terrorists steal a state owned Saudi aircraft and use it to bomb some mosque and incite civil war? The answer is a clear 100% 0 chance this can happen unless the state of Saudi Arabia turns against the western world. I gues you forget that the US can simply disable these bombs given a moments notice? Guess no one here thought of that.

I'm having a hard time buying any argument presented here on the state of this weapons transfer.

-S

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Most ideas present in this thread are crack smoking ideas with little thought or basis behind them.

Arming a friendly nation has nothing to do with terrorism.

Well if that nation uses forms of terrorism to prosecute their policies then yea it is, and we all know how insanely corrupt and fickle middle eastern governments are whether that involves clandestine anti-West activity or just opportunistic ideologues in their midst diverting support to other causes. A terrorist is still a terrorist if its fighting for "our" side. The US has routinely supported terrorist organizations over the decades as well and often times they become our new enemies. American military hardware always shows up in the oddest places and its no wonder why.

We keep talking about changing the middle east and yet we keep feeding the status quo.

[caspofungin]

That the Saudi kind of Islamism (Wahabitism) is of a slightly different colour does not mean that they are less extreme and dangerous than al quaeda

the wahabis and the saudi royal family are not one and the same -- the wahabis command the support of a significant section of the population, and the government has to perform the juggling act of keeping them happy so as not to foment a revolution, but at the same time trying to limit their influence.

i'm afraid you're wrong trying to equate wahabism with the saudi royal family - the 2 are not 1 and the same.

the country is already as islamic as it gets

yeah, well there's different degrees of how islamic a country can get -- believe me, if the saudi royal family falls, sa will turn into a country so fundamentalist the u.s. will be courting iran to stop the saudi influence. the king isn't anti-west, he's anti -us foreign policy. he's much more of a realist and pragmatist than the former king, and he realizes that his country needs to be intimately involved with the west, from an economic as well as a security point of view. and he's actively taking steps against al qaeda.

The answer is a clear 100% 0 chance this can happen unless the state of Saudi Arabia turns against the western world

and that's exactly the point -- the arms sale is to help prop up a friendly government, and try and shift the balance of power in the region as a whole.

[Skybird]

But such arms deals have a long tradition in Washington. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was a maxim of several US governments during the Cold War. Washington's foreign policy often sanctioned selling weapons to questionable regimes promising to help contain the communist threat regardless of the potential consequences.
The deals frequently ended as debacles: US soldiers have all too often stared down the barrels of guns their own government sold to the armies of countries that used to be their supposed allies. The convoluted US-Iranian relationship is a textbook example of such policies.
After the Shah of Iran consolidated his power with CIA help in 1953 in what is known as Operation Ajax, the country became America's most important ally in the Middle East after Israel. In return for access to Iran's bountiful oil fields, Washington sold the Shah an arsenal of modern weapons. With state-of-the-art fighter jets, new rockets and powerful tanks, Iran became a leading military power in the Persian Gulf. Some 40,000 US military advisors taught Iranians how to use the weapons.
After the Islamic fundamentalist regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the Shah in 1979 and sparked a crisis by taking 52 Americans hostage, it became painfully clear to Washington that its weapons were now in the wrong hands. And so the US government quickly turned to the biggest enemy of the religious fundamentalists -- Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
For eight years -- until 1988 -- Hussein waged a brutal war with his eastern neighbors, supported with weapons and know-how from American sources. Even Donald Rumsfeld, who would go on to plan the current war in Iraq as defense secretary under US President George W. Bush, visited Hussein in 1983.
As a sweetener, the Americans offered Baghdad classified aerial photographs that allowed Hussein's generals to inflict great damage on Iranian forces -- sometimes using chemical weapons. Only a few years later, of course, US soldiers would wage a war with the very Iraqi military that Washington had so meticulously helped build.

Land Wars in Asia, and Elsewhere
The United States also supplied Afghan freedom fighters in the 1980s with money and arms for their struggle against occupying Soviet troops. One of the best customers for the CIA back then was Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden. Two decades later, US commandos are hunting for the world's most notorious terrorist and his Taliban helpers. Military and civilian aircraft flying over Afghanistan are still forced to make evasive maneuvers to avoid Stinger missiles fired at them which were originally supplied by the United States to fight the Communists.

Washington protected and supported Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega for years. Despite all the cash and weapons from America, he also was deeply involved in the drug trade. That led the father of the current US president, George Bush senior, to depose the strongman by sending troops to the Central American country in Operation Just Cause. Noriega was sent to jail in Miami.

The Americans also had little luck with their strategy in the Philippines. As Ferdinand Marcos came to power in Manila in 1965, it appeared as if both sides would benefit. The new president sent Filipino troops to bolster Washington's flagging war effort in Vietnam. In return, the United States supported the regime in Manila both politically and militarily -- even though it was clear that Marcos' henchmen were using US weaponry to oppress the country's opposition. The instability that continues to plague the Philippines today is part of that legacy.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the latest string of weapons deals during her recent diplomatic tour of the Middle East. "We are determined to maintain the balances -- the military and strategic balances -- within the region," she said. But American weapons have a way of outlasting the shifting goals of American foreign policy.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...498421,00.html

And this:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=119953