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Mark Steyn: Reality check
The Spectator (U.K.) ^
| 06/05/04
| Mark Steyn
Posted on 06/03/2004 6:02:21 AM PDT by Pokey78
click here to read article
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1
posted on
06/03/2004 6:02:21 AM PDT
by
Pokey78
To: Howlin; riley1992; Miss Marple; deport; Dane; sinkspur; steve; kattracks; JohnHuang2; ...
2
posted on
06/03/2004 6:03:16 AM PDT
by
Pokey78
(quidnunc: A one person crusade to destroy Mark Steyn.)
To: Pokey78
Thank you, Pokey!...I hear they are jockeying for position in SA ...which Prince gets the biggest piece of the wealth....
3
posted on
06/03/2004 6:10:47 AM PDT
by
MEG33
(John Kerry's been AWOL for two decades on issues of National Security)
To: Pokey78
Whats going on? Either the Saudi police agencies are totally incompetent, as suggested by their high level of casualties on these occasions. Or a significant proportion are hopelessly corrupt and on the take from the terrorists. Or theyre under the sway of some of the murkier members of the royal family. Or theyre following orders from higher up the chain of command, maybe even from the long-time (three decades) interior minister Prince Nayef himself.
I choose ALL OF THE ABOVE! The Kingdom is hopelessly corrupt and will fall as a result of the war. We need to make it fall the right way.
4
posted on
06/03/2004 6:17:07 AM PDT
by
Rummyfan
To: Pokey78
5
posted on
06/03/2004 6:21:03 AM PDT
by
Carry_Okie
(The environment is too complex and too important to be managed by central planning.)
To: Pokey78
At the very minimum, Washington needs to have solid, detailed contingency plans for securing the oil fields, and making sure the Hashemites are on stand-by to return to Mecca and Medina.
I'm sure these already exist.
6
posted on
06/03/2004 6:21:26 AM PDT
by
Rummyfan
flag for later with thanks to Pokey for the full post...
7
posted on
06/03/2004 6:28:20 AM PDT
by
eureka!
(May karma come back to the presstitutes and Rats in a material way.....)
To: Pokey78
8
posted on
06/03/2004 6:29:20 AM PDT
by
Snake65
(Osama Bin Decomposing)
To: Pokey78
9
posted on
06/03/2004 6:30:08 AM PDT
by
headsonpikes
(Spirit of '76 bttt!)
To: Pokey78
We should have seized the oil fields long ago and let these drones go to work for a living
10
posted on
06/03/2004 6:30:44 AM PDT
by
uncbob
To: Pokey78
That Crown Prince Abdullah, Prince Sultan, Prince Nayef and cos brilliant strategy of denying that theres a problem, buying off the terrorists, letting them escape and saying theyre all Zionists will be able to reform their failing state or at least hold the lid on? Well, that's the Kerry Plan...and since we can already see that it's not working in practice in Saudi Arabia, why would anyone support a Presidential candidate who advocates it?
To: Rummyfan
"I'm sure these already exist."
The real question do we have the brains and will to implement them.
12
posted on
06/03/2004 6:33:46 AM PDT
by
Agent Smith
(Fallujah delenda est. (I wish))
To: Pokey78
Another great one by Steyn. Thanks for the whole thing Pokey.
L
13
posted on
06/03/2004 6:35:50 AM PDT
by
Lurker
("Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite"-Robert Heinlein)
To: Pokey78
Several adjectives spring to mind for a man who claims that Zionism has the youth of Saudi Arabia in its grip bonkers or desperate, depending on whether you think he believes it. But able would come pretty low down on my list. Somebody please put Mark Steyn in charge of America's foreign policy!
14
posted on
06/03/2004 6:36:44 AM PDT
by
Tax-chick
("It's only important for me to know!" ~ Gen. Patton)
To: Pokey78
Let the jihadis have the KSA. At some point they are going to have to govern and make policy decisions. With all the westerners (and assorted other infidels) gone they will not be able to keep the oil flowing and the local economy will fall apart. The gulf emirates will move even closer to the U.S. and some of the governments in the region who are not now friendly towards us (Egypt for instance) will likely move closer to us as they are unlikely to want their citizens getting any crazy ideas about revolution when they go on a haj. Right now the Saudi princelings are not our friends; I find it hard to imagine that we will be worse off with avowed enemies in charge as opposed to enemies who pretend to be our friends.
15
posted on
06/03/2004 6:37:11 AM PDT
by
91B
(God made man, Sam Colt made men equal.)
To: Pokey78
A FULL TEXT post ! Yay !!!
16
posted on
06/03/2004 6:40:30 AM PDT
by
MeekOneGOP
(There is ONLY ONE good Democrat: one that has just been voted OUT of POWER ! Straight ticket GOP!)
To: Pokey78
Thanks for the ping, Pokey! I hope President Bush's reelection team taps Steyn as a valuable "surrogate", and helps Steyn get HIS message out, because the more people who read Steyn, the more likely we have a Bush/Cheney blowout this fall.
17
posted on
06/03/2004 6:52:16 AM PDT
by
alwaysconservative
(All proceeds from this tag line will be donated to a good cause.)
To: Pokey78
Thanks for the PING, Pokey.
Mark Steyn is brilliant:
And, given that its the Saudi government that funds all the madrasahs that form the ideological backbone of Islamist terrorism, is there any point in pretending that the House of Saud and al-Qaeda are on opposite sides rather than twin manifestations of the same problem? The West backs the Saudi regime as a bulwark against local destabilisation, in return for which they underwrite destabilisation of the West across the entire planet.
That was the lesson of the Nineties: you try to fight a war defensively, you lose. You send the FBI in to look over Khobar Towers as a crime scene, and Prince Nayef obstructs your investigators. You try to lob a couple of cruise missiles at Osama in Afghanistan, and Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence picks them up on the radar and tips him off. Thats the world John Kerry wants to return to. Theres no reason for Bush to join him there. Its not possible to manage Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and a myriad of smaller problems indefinitely. So manage the smaller problems and, when it comes to the biggest ones, confront them and fix them.
What exactly is realist about continuing to back the Frankensaud monster? The present policy is all but certain to wind up delivering the peninsula and its oil into the hands of Osamas buddies. In one sense, the war on terror is a Saudi civil war which the Saudis cunningly exported to the rest of the world. The trick now is to gift-wrap it and send it back home marked for the attention of Prince Nayef. Given the inevitability of disaster if we stick to a failed containment strategy, how could things be any worse if we went in for some creative disruption? At the very minimum, Washington needs to have solid, detailed contingency plans for securing the oil fields, and making sure the Hashemites are on stand-by to return to Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia cant be saved, and the more we postpone reaching that conclusion and acting on it, the messier its going to be. Whoever youre backing in November, the quiet life isnt on the ballot.
18
posted on
06/03/2004 7:09:45 AM PDT
by
Tolik
To: alwaysconservative
Agree. Add Victor Davis Hanson to the team and ask them to produce Infomercials. Or simply reprint their articles in all the major newspapers, even as a paid add.
19
posted on
06/03/2004 7:13:26 AM PDT
by
Tolik
To: 91B
The Jihadis do not need the oil to run a 9th century society. And cutting off the oil will be a material defeat for the West that will wreck the Western economies. The West will recover with the coasts and ANWR opened up suddenly for oil and new nuke plants building but it will take 5-10 years and in the meantime we will be fighting a harder war.
20
posted on
06/03/2004 7:15:09 AM PDT
by
arthurus
(Better to fight them over THERE than over HERE.)
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