Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse • Hacker News Board

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#71

Post by ptaipale » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 1:46 PM UTC

ianamartin wrote: post #47

baliansa wrote: post #6

This article comes from someone who clearly doesn't understand Saudi Arabia. It keeps on portraying Saudi Arabia as an extremism exporter while it is a very moderate country, just turn on their media ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Broadcasting_Cente... ) and you will see a very different nation from what is portrayed here. Saudis have suffered a lot in the War on Terrorism, the number of Saudis who died…

I will freely admit that I don't understand the politics of Saudi Arabia. But is it not a known fact that the 9-11 operators were a) Saudi, and b) backed by the Saudi government? I'm certainly happy to be proven wrong, but if I'm correct here, that seems a lot to me to fit in with the concept of "exporting terrorism".

> But is it not a known fact that the 9-11 operators were a) Saudi, and b) backed by the Saudi government?

a) yes, b) no. Saudi government's relations with Osama bin Laden and his network went sour in about 1990.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#72

Post by blisterpeanuts » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #31

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #28

And Russia. In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans. If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.

> If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully. It might still be an improvement over its current approach - which is not falling apart, but is neither quiet nor peaceful. There's a fair bit of political analysis that suggests that Russia is for example about to test NATO by starting a war with Turkey, and that it is deliberately killing civilians in Syr…

Care to share your sources? Who are all these credible analysts saying Russia wants to start a war with Turkey?

As for creating a Syrian humanitarian crisis, the regime, the rebels, and Isis are doing a perfectly fine job on their own.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#73

Post by blisterpeanuts » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #65

The bigger problem in the future is Iran vs Saudi Arabia. Given they are the leaders of the two major sides of Islam and rivals in the oil business some day they will start shooting at each other. The Iranians may not be a totally unified country but they have experience at war and being a single people whereas SA does not have sufficiently internal loyalty to sustain any kind of real war. The house of Saud would run…

The U.S. would protect Saudi Arabia.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#74

Post by s_q_b » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

salafi wrote: post #67

s_q_b wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salafism is a very complicated word to unpack. So yes, there are less radical elements who identify as Salafis, including the Muslim brotherhood. But although the meaning of Salafism as a historical word would take quite a bit to unpack, it's clearly referring to a particularly fast-growing form of fundamentalist Islam today. Now, as for the sermons... It is my experience that the Saudi's pray with one hand and dole…

> It is my experience that the Saudi's pray with one hand and dole out cash to terrorist groups with the other. That makes zero sense. Why would they fund the people calling for their destruction? What exactly is your "experience?" It's just more unfounded conjecture.

Good questions. First, Saudi Arabia's government is in favor of the United States, but their wealthy citizens often fund non-state actors to attack Western targets.

Second, my experience comes from studying International Relations at Princeton.

For sources, there are too many sources to count for the assertion that Saudi citizens continue to give money to Salafist (for lack of a better word) non-state actors that target civilians. I can look up the canonical sources for you later tonight.

However, it's so common that a quick Google search will turn up the overall gist.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#75

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

hartpuff wrote: post #54

mirimir wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Not long after 9/11, there were reports that Mossad agents (the "art students", as I recall) had been tailing the 9/11 terrorists. Almost all of whom were Saudis. But I've seen no credible reports that any of them knew what was planned. And yes, those pages might be very interesting.

> The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world ?

Most flight training in the world is done in the US, by a wide margin.

Because of that, they would probably stick out much less doing it here than trying to do it in one of the few EU airline training facilities.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#76

Post by MisterWebz » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #62

gdy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's a fair bit of political analysis" You mean propaganda?

Well, as they say, the first casualty of war is truth, but there are a number of factual events that fit the narrative of Russia under Putin being willing to flex its muscle and encourage instability in its neighbour to the west while inspiring Russians to dream of days of yore when they ruled half of Europe... There's the numerous videos and reports from organisations like Amnesty International, accusing Russia of b…

You're clearly not following the Syrian civil war very closely if you think Russia's the one acting irresponsibly.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#77

Post by roymurdock » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

> But the highly educated Sunni majority, with unprecedented exposure to the outside world, is unlikely to stay satisfied forever with a few favors doled out by geriatric rulers impervious to their input.

They pay 0% taxes. Hardly a small favor. But it will be an interesting economic experiment when Saudi Arabia is forced to raise some revenue from its citizens.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#78

Post by salafi » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #66

temp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't, for the life of me, understand why people associate being a Salafi with the various terrorist groups. In Europe, foreign-funded Salafi Imams are generally the ones that recruit local Muslims to go fight for ISIS. To give an actual example, in Bosnia the leader of the Salafi movement has been arrested for recruiting for ISIS. The Vienna Salafi movement has been found to collect money that was then forwarded…

To give an actual example, in Bosnia the leader of the Salafi movement has been arrested for recruiting for ISIS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Bosni%C4%87

He's far from being a Salafi. He's a Bin Laden sympathizer, for one.

Ask any mainstream Muslim who the Salafi scholars are in recent times and undoubtedly one of the first names mentioned would be the late Ibn Baz.

Ibn Baz was a harsh critic of Bin Laden and his ideology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Aziz_ibn_Baz#Osama_bin_...

Here is confirmation from Al Fawzan (the most-respected Saudi scholar now) regarding Ibn Baz's (and his own) position with respect to Bin Laden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-a65Og2uow

Here is a translated video that includes the speech of a late Yemeni scholar, Muqbil Al Wadi'ee, regarding Bin Laden. It's worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO7BcXTc4zw

My point is that anyone can call themselves or ascribe themselves to anything. However, that doesn't necessarily make it a reality (yeah, yeah, no true Scotsman).

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#79

Post by tome » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #38

tome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers How about the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan

Hashim ibn 'Abd Manaf died around 510 AD, so King Hussein's connection is rather tenuous to say the least. The state called Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, was founded by Ibn Saud in 1926, give or take a few years depending on where you draw the line.

(The fact remains that the country has that name because the royal family has that name. The way the family obtained that name is irrelevant. Without that family on the throne the country would be called something (slightly) different.

But ...)

This is a tenuous nitpick of an otherwise very interesting comment, thanks.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#80

Post by rtpg » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

s_q_b wrote: post #36

nabla9 wrote: post #25

Boko Haram, al-Qaida, ISIS, Ansar al-Shariah, Jund al-Khilafan, al-Nusra, ... You can backtrack basically all active jihadist groups that attack west back to to the Saudi funded ideology. Even ISIS is offshoot of Wahabbi/Salafism. The "traditional" Islamist like Brotherhood put their efforts in Arab countries. Saudis are not in control of these groups, but they are responsible for the ideology. Saudi Arabia's Curricu…

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

Serious question but are the contents likely to be anything more than "SA money ended up in AQ hands"? I can't imagine too many bombshells being able to remain classified.