We once were a free nation, now we are merely vassals.
Posted on 10/11/2013 12:01:16 AM PDT by RC one
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia, exasperated with U.S. vacillation related to Syria's chemical arsenal and now its effort to reconcile with Iran, Riyadh's foremost adversary, is forging a new alliance of Islamist rebels in Syria under a pro-Saudi warlord to supersede the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.
Riyadh also wants to foment an Iraq-style "Sunni Awakening" to unite Syria's majority sect to topple the minority Damascus regime of President Bashar Assad.
Middle East analyst Michael Weiss, writing in the Beirut Web portal Now Lebanon, observed Riyadh has "taken substantive measures to circumvent Washington altogether on Syria by activating a cadre of new clients in the form of a hard-line Salafist rebels who are now united under the umbrella of the army of Islam.
"The Saudis have enlisted '50 brigades' and some thousands of fighters under a new structure headed by Zahren Alloush, head of Liwa al-Islam, the new group's most powerful Salafist brigade."
Alloush studied Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia where his father Abdallah is a Salafist cleric.
The Saudi move is also a response to last week's formation of a hard-line Islamist alliance of 13 groups, including the powerful Jabhat al-Nusra, allied with al-Qaida, and to isolate the jihadists who're proving to be the most effective anti-regime force in Syria.
The plan seems to be to buy control of disaffected rebel bands, many of them without strong leadership, and to forge them into a well-armed force capable of battering Assad's regime.
"For us in Saudi Arabia, the worst scenario is to let Bashar survive this: he has to go," said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi analyst close to Riyadh's power elite.
"The world can ignore what's happening in Syria, but this is on our doorstep and it's on fire with sectarian flames that will reach all neighboring countries."
The Saudi strategy has been engineered in large part by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the General Intelligence Directorate, and his brother Prince Salman, named deputy defense minister by Abdullah in August.
Bandar, Abdullah's nephew, was ambassador to the United States for 22 years (1983-2005).
He's a master of Middle Eastern intrigue and played a key role in several covert operations with the Americans, including arming Islamist mujahedin against the invading Soviets in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.
On July 31, Bandar flew secretly to Moscow for closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad's ally, at his suburban home in hopes of persuading him to back off keeping the Syrian dictator in power.
Bandar reportedly offered to buy Russian arms worth $15 billion and not to oppose Russia's natural gas deals, but apparently to no avail.
Nonetheless, the episode underlined how Riyadh's strategic view is swinging increasingly eastward.
We once were a free nation, now we are merely vassals.
The Saudis are an important ally and we are letting them down. It saddens me to see them looking to Putin for aid that we should be providing. The US/Saudi arrangement has been extremely beneficial to both partners for over 40 years now. Eroding that relationship would be one of the biggest foreign policy blunders that Obama could make IMO.
The Saudis have been making fools out of us since the oil embargo. Most of that has been behind the scenes. If you ever wondered why Obama made an ass of himself over Syria and why he bombed Libya, now you know. That was the Saudi pulling Obama’s strings.
Don’t forget 9/11 was a gift from the Saudis.
We need to pursue energy independence as our highest priority. Eventually that will greatly reduce cash flow into the Middle East and the sources of funding for terrorism.
The Saudis have accepted nothing but US dollars for their oil for the past 40 years and have thereby turned the US dollar into the de facto global reserve currency. If you want to buy oil, you need to maintain a large supply of US dollars to do so. That has created a massive global demand for US dollars. The Saudis then took those dollars and bought our debt with them. In return, we have provided them the military hardware that keeps the house of Saud all powerful within their region. This arrangement, orchestrated by one Richard M. Nixon, has been extremely beneficial to both parties. If this arrangement were to suddenly come to an end, it would likely bring about the fall of western capitalism. Furthermore, the Saudis need us as much as we need them. And OBL perpetrated 9-11, not Saudi Arabia. We should be helping Saudi Arabia with their Syria problem IMO but Americans have lost their appetite for war after Iraq and afghanistan. Ghadaffi was trying to trade oil for currencies other than dollars btw. So was Saddam Huseein. So was Hugo Chavez. So is Iran.
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