Donald Trump and the Saudis: He should have taken my advice - and his own

The Star Ledger of Newark ^ | 10.23.18 | Paul Mulshine

[Coleus]

A reader asked me the other day why I was writing about marijuana legalization in Canada instead of President Trump's tangled relationship with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman.

Simple.  Because it's more fun to go to Canada to write about pot than to write about the Mideast. But now that I'm back in the U.S.A., let me address the Saudi issue. I told you so.

For as long as I've been writing about Saudi Arabia, I have had nothing but bad things to say about the place. A month after the 9/11 attacks, I wrote, "If Saudi Arabia had only sand, we would consider it an outlaw state where women are treated as second-class citizens and where a dictatorship forbids free elections. But because it has oil, we have had to pretend its government is legitimate." A search of my past writings reveals 17 years of unrelenting critiques of the Saudis (who are the actual "leading state sponsors of terrorism.").  The same can't be said for many of my fellow pundits. The prevailing wisdom among the politicians and the punditocracy has been that, although the Saudis have questionable domestic policies, they are our allies against the Iranians and in the search for an eventual solution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

I have never subscribed to that theory. I fail to see any reason the Iranians are any more of a threat to our interests than the Saudis. But a preference for the Saudis was the consensus view until Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi got into that "fistfight" at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Anyone who endorsed that view can hardly criticize Trump. I can, however. And so can the state senator who was New Jersey's first prominent supporter of

[madison10]

More BS.

[Lurker]

We should have turned Saudi Arabia into radioactive glass on 9/12/2001.

L

[Boomer]

If it wasn’t for their oil that probably would have happened. The minute oil is not a critical commodity I think the Saudis will be looking for a paddle on their dry creek boat.

[familyop]

" Because it's more fun to go to Canada to write about pot..."

That drug and the foolishness caused by it leads to this retardation.

"I fail to see any reason the Iranians are any more of a threat to our interests than the Saudis."

The stuff makes people stupid and turns them to the left.

[familyop]

Yes, the piece is BS. The Iranians have only been obsessed with building nukes and threatening to wipe us out with them countless times. Drug zombies toking and writing garbage is like a Californian Ideology disease on the Internet.

[SunkenCiv]

I fail to see any reason the Iranians are any more of a threat to our interests than the Saudis.

IOW, the author is an ***hole..