Posted on 10/29/2001 8:09:04 PM PST by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:03:51 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Riyadh's leaders must enter the 21st century. Their very survival is at stake.
Crown Prince Abdullah has now admitted what everyone else has been thinking, which is that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is "at a crossroads."
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Saudi ruler wrote to President Bush in August that "a time comes when peoples and nations part" and that "it is time for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to look at their separate interests. Those governments that don't feel the pulse of the people and respond to it will suffer the fate of the Shah of Iran."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
"Those governments that don't feel the pulse of the people and respond to it will suffer the fate of the Shah of Iran."
Indeed, it does say a whole lot.
I wonder how much more it says about Russian influence behind the social sea-change which has distrurbed the Saudi leaders, in like manner by which the Russians fomented much of what toppled the Shah?
The above statement says practically everything about the Why behind the inertia of whatever support our once-ally has recently offered.
-ccm
But Jimmy Carter isn't president. I don't get the point he's trying to make.
It is a good post. I may argue with this part:
"But as a practical matter, the debt-ridden Saudis need the petrodollars as much as the West needs the oil. An OPEC embargo for political reasons might send the developed world into recession, but the West would weather it better than the Gulf countries."
Underestimating the importance of oil is like whistling in the dark. It sounds good to say this, but I'm not so sure that it wouldn't have a big impact.
Hey! I didn't think of this when I started the post, but... if we stop using their damn oil they lose all their power.
Here is my new car: Prius!
It is a hybrid. I get 65 mpg when I baby it, 52 mpg if I drive like a madman. I'm an engineer and I HATE designs that only work on paper, not the real world. I was going to buy an SUV and when to test this car (so I could check it off the list). Wow! It is a real car that holds a family of 5, doesn't need to be plugged in (what nonsense!), is cleaner than an all-electric car (drives the enviro-nuts... ugh... nuts), is made of regular old steel, and gets great mileage.
Sorry, didn't mean a commercial. But trust a fellow freeper. If we all drove cars like it we could tell the saudis to go screw themselves.
LOL, thank you! This response is the best philosophy i've heard yet, ugh it's painfully true how much the media hates Bush.
Time to break up the pan Arab cabal and the likely funders of a lot of Islamic fundamentalism.
Can anyone make a gif file like this one using the Saudi flag?
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