(12-20-2019 11:22 PM)JRsec Wrote: They needed a scapegoat so as not to look like the incompetent fools they were so they trashed a helpless innocent man to cover their own asses. 1996 should have been a huge red flag for our systemic failures to deal with terrorism and if it had been heeded perhaps we wouldn't have been so incompetent on 9/11. But our need to deny the Saudi presence in global terrorism sure as hell has led us into some colossal denials and a perpetual state of delusion with regard to the reality of the threat of Islam.
The "Saudi presence in global terrorism" is a bit of a complicated issue. You have to understand what is going on in the Middle East. Americans view it in far too simplistic terms, that it's a bunch of "ragheads" that are all evil.
In reality there are a number of competing interests. Saudis are Arab (Semitic), primarily Sunni, Muslims. Iraq is primarily Arab Shia Muslims, Iran is Aryan Shia Mislims. There is a sizable Sunni minority (along with a Kurd minority) in present-day Iraq. There is actually a Sunni majority in Syria, although Assad and the government, and most Syrians along the Mediterranean coast, are Shia (Alawite sect). Additionally, Iran has long-held ambitions to restore the ancient Persian Empire, from Kabul to Aden to Cairo to Istanbul. That makes them an existential threat to every Arab nation.
The Saudis openly support Sunni minorities in Iraq and Iran, and the Sunni majority in Syria. Because those groups are out of power, they fell that they must resort to terrorist activities to advance their cause.
There are two big problems:
1) I medieval times, the trade routes to the Orient were overland through Arab country. This made the Arab world very wealthy, very forward thinking in scientfic development, and fairly important in world affairs. Just before 1500, Dias and da Gama found the way around the Cape of Good Hope, ultimately to India, and all of a sudden the Mideast lost its importance for about 400 years. During that period it declined, culminating in the fall of the corrupt Ottoman Empire in WWI. At about the same time, oil was discovered throughout the area, and they suddenly became very important to the world economy again. So you have a tremendous amount of economic influence being wielded by institutions that are holdovers from a period when the region was basically an obscure backwater that didn't matter.
2) After WWI, the allies partitioned the old Ottoman Empire. They tended to draw straight lines without regard to ethnic or religious groupings. France got Syria (including Lebanon) as a mandate, and was supposed to get northern Iraq, but the Brits prevailed at San Remo, and they got mandates over Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq. What needs to happen in order to give peace a chance is that borders need to be redrawn. Crazy Joe had one good idea (even a stopped clock is right twice a day) in that after the fall of Saddam, Iraq should have been partitioned into an independent Kurdistan in the north, Shia Mesopotamia in the east, and Sunni Iraq in the west. That is still the way it should be done. The Turks don't want that, because they have a significant Kurdish minority in the east, but that could be handled. If we make Kurdistan big enough (and it has a lot of oil) then a lot of the Turkish Kurds would presumably migrate to their homeland, and that eases Turkey's problem. Syria also needs to be partitioned into Sunni east and Shia west. If we had split Iraq that way after the fall of Saddam, and had left the Baathists in power in Sunni Iraq, they would have banded with the Sunnis in eastern Syria, and probably brought about the partition of Syria. As far as Israel and the Palestinians, there is no workable two-state solution within the current footprint of Israel What needs to happen is the creation of a separate Palestinian state somewhere. My thought is Sinai (their true ancestral home), which Egypt owns but can't control, and Egypt needs a huge economic boost. So let them keep the canal and adequate land as a buffer on each side, build the Qattara Depression project that they want, give them a bunch of money, and create a Palestinian state in central Sinai (it has oil and considerable tourism appeal because of dive sites int he Red Sea, so it has far more economic viability than either West Bank or Gaza). Give Palestine all of Sinai between 33E and 34E, and give Israel everything east of 34E, which gives them control of the west side of the Gulf of Aqaba, down to Sharm al-Sheikh (which is strategically valuable to them), and also keeps the Palestinians further away from Dimona, site of their version of the Manhattan Project. Do that and add the Tom Clancy idea of Jerusalem as an international city in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to exist, and you'd have a framework within which a peaceful Mideast would be possible. It costs a lot of money to bribe everybody to make it happen, but we've killed and maimed a bunch of our 20-somethings trying to protect a status quo that simply can't and won't work.
