Monday, March 08, 2010

Is the Saudi King Abdullah more independent of the United States than Egypt's King Farouk was of Britain?



It is difficult for Americans to understand that the era of colonialism is over in almost all of the world, and yet it simply has not ended in the Middle East. The United States is not an ideologically colonialist power. The United States began as an ideologically liberal humanist power, and in its self perception continues in that tradition.

However, keeping the Middle East safe for the Zionist project requires the extension of colonialism. The United States is more hostile against democracy in the Middle East than it is even in Mexico or Central America. If Mexico had as backwards a political system as Saudi Arabia - which is the weirdest political system in the world, weirder than North Korea - Mexico would be formally and informally pressured by the United States to reform its political system. Ultimately, even a hostile Mexico, within plausible bounds, does not power a strategic threat to the United States.
The big question regarding the Saudi succession hangs over whether, and how, the kingship will ever be transferred from the numerous aging brothers and half-brothers who stand in line after Crown Prince Sultan, to the "next generation" of princes - some of the more senior of whom are already nearing 70 years old.

...

Many of Abdul-Aziz's sons had a dozen or more sons of their own. Saudi Arabia has no system of "primogeniture" (first-son succession.) Thus, there are hundreds of possible eventual claimants to the throne. Indeed, the youngest of Abdul-Aziz's sons, Prince Muqrin, is, at 64, some years younger than several of the next-generation princes who now hope to become king.
The most bizarre political system on earth.

Israel could reduce Mecca to rubble tomorrow. Saudi Arabia does not have defenses that could prevent an Israeli attack and it does not have means to retaliate against Israel if it was to do so - despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has a larger population and spends more on its military than Israel. No democratic, no nationalist, no government that adheres to any ideology at all (communist, Islamist, Baathist, whatever) could tolerate such a situation.

Any ideology that takes effective control of Saudi Arabia's government would easily render Zionism non-viable. Any ideology - these days Western analysts wrongly claim that Islamism in the Middle East is some unique threat to US interests, but even if Saudi Arabia was a revolutionary liberal humanist country like the US, it would not tolerate either Israel's dominance over its region or the idea that the rights of Palestinians (for example to return) are secondary to the rights of Jewish people in Palestine.

Any and every ideology in the Middle East is a threat to Zionism, and the only reliable way to prevent every ideology from assuming political power is through colonial dictatorships as such as those the US maintains in the region. The US failed to establish a colonial dictatorship over Iraq - lead either by Chalabi or Allawi - because of the heroic effort to maintain Iraq's independence by both Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, with the outside support of Iran and Syria primarily. Now the US is seeing how much influence it can salvage over the country and how long the country will remain ruined and unable to assert itself regionally. But this failure does not change the US need, as Israel's guarantor, to prevent any ideological viewpoint from attaining political power in the Middle East.

I don't see how Farouk was a colonial subject but Abdullah is not. Maybe neither was. Winston Churchill likely considered both Farouk and Abdul-Aziz his colonial subjects. Maybe he was wrong. If Abdul-Aziz was a colonial subject ruler though, when did Saudi Arabia become independent?

Zionism depends on Saudi Arabia never becoming independent.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Farouk was Brittania's subject & Abdul-Aziz was Uncle Sam's client.

The Israelis would not bomb the KSA as it is under the protection of the USA no more than they would bomb & strafe a US ship (sorry U.S.S. Liberty).

WILL

lidia said...

I would not agree with some things you say here, Arnold, but the last of this post semtence is 100% right.

b said...

OT

A snippet from todays's Wall Street Journal's piece on Uri Lubrani, an old adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and former Israeli ambassador to Iran.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704486504575097323070730564.html

"More recently, as Iran's nuclear program grew and Washington and Israel hardened their views, Mr. Lubrani's calls to support what appeared to be a beaten-down opposition seemed out of touch.

Mr. Lubrani says that witnessing the Iranian revolution gave him faith in the power of the Iranian people to affect change. From a remote seventh-story ofge in an old Ministry of Defense building, he oversaw a four-man team that quietly supported the Iranian opposition and sowed unrest inside Iran's borders."