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Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

theatlantic.com

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Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#211

Post by s_q_b »

hackuser wrote: post #194
s_q_b wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tar…

> my experience comes from studying International Relations at Princeton If you want to hold forth as an expert, it's fair to ask: Did you take a couple online classes? Get a Ph.D. in international relations?

Ah, Bachelor's summa cum laude. I certainly didn't intend to misrepresent myself as a Ph.D.

The computer science courses also put a drag on my GPA, because Princeton doesn't let you double major.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#212

Post by simonh »

merpnderp wrote: post #182
simonh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone please stop voting this person down, I don't completely agree with the post but it's a commonly held view in SA and is given politely and respectfully. I think it deserves addressing in the same spirit. The SA government doesn't support Al Qaeda of course, but the government does heavily fund extensive networks of religious schools and charities that push a very intolerant and view of non-Muslims and non-Wah…

"Where Saudi Arabia is funding extremism largely by accident..." It's pretty hard to believe that the Kingdom hasn't figured out this is happening and are completely helpless to stop it. They either can't or won't, but they certainly know who is doing it and the extent it is occurring.

Terrorism finance is a very complex subject which I'm only peripherally knowledgeable about. I'm sure they know it's happening, but they're just not able or willing to address it. Wahabism is a very strict and intolerant ideology to start with, so preaching things we might consider unacceptable are quite acceptable to them. The problem from their point of view is much smaller than it is from ours.

However where the ideology being supported and promulgated does go beyond what they would consider acceptable, they just don't have and are basically incapable of the level of oversight and monitoring required to identify and address it. That occurs to far down the funding and management chain for them to be equipped to deal with it. So in reality their choices are switch off the whole thing - billions of dollars in funding for education, health and charitable causes across the Muslim world on which extensive programmes and hundreds of thousands livelihoods depend - or live with the downside while making ineffectual efforts to control it. From their point of view these programmes are doing vastly more good than harm. It's just a matter of relative priorities.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#213

Post by ptaipale »

joelwilliamson wrote: post #181
ptaipale wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is rather simply explained by the fact that Kingdom od Saudi Arabia doesn't cover all of geographical Arabia.

The Kingdom of Jordan also doesn't cover the entirety of the river Jordan.

It did until 1967. However, the point is that "Arabia" has a specific meaning as an area that is different from the area of Saudi-Arabia, whereas different meanings of Jordan the river, Jordan the country and Jordan the toothbrush are usually clearly distinguishable from context.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#214

Post by prostoalex »

tootie wrote: post #207
prostoalex wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good reason for lack of sharing as both Aldrich Ames (CIA) and Robert Hanssen (FBI) ended up providing much more sensitive information to the adversary than their rank qualified them for. The agencies seem to be on the cycle of high compartmentalization -> criticism for lack of sharing -> low compartmentalization -> major spy scandal -> high compartmentalization.

Those guys committed treason by sharing with the Soviets. I don't see how that's relevant. The reason for the wall is because they have conflicting mandates.

The natural response of each agency to prevent such massive information losses in the future is to limit the amount of information available, make it accessible only on the need-to-know basis, and introduce bureaucracy into the information retrieval process by keeping the logs and requiring sign-offs.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#215

Post by matwood »

adrianN wrote: post #176
matwood wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. A 9/11 style attack is also a single time event. Now that passengers know the outcome, they simply will not let it happen again. The only possible method would be to turn an existing pilot into a suicide killer.

The reinforced doors they introduced after 9/11 make this strategy particularly good. The passengers can't do anything if the pilot decides that he has a death wish.

If the pilot has been compromised there is not much that can be done regardless of flight door strength.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#216

Post by rlucas »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #128
matwood wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - "Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe the opulence of the Sauds (the ruling family; yup, Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers). For example, the massively lucrative alcohol smuggling racket is generally acknowledged to be run by one of the princes (of whom there are hundreds; Ibn al-Saud was such a horny old goat that he had 45 sons who survived to adulthood and had children of their…

On a tangent: more countries named like that: Rhodesia. Bolivia. Colombia. Liechtenstein. Swaziland. Uzbekistan. Denmark. Russia and Belarus.

Not really even close to fair, unless you're going to claim that Cecil Rhodes' family runs "Rhodesia", Bolivar's family, Columbus, etc. presently.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#217

Post by [deleted] »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #128
matwood wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - "Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe the opulence of the Sauds (the ruling family; yup, Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers). For example, the massively lucrative alcohol smuggling racket is generally acknowledged to be run by one of the princes (of whom there are hundreds; Ibn al-Saud was such a horny old goat that he had 45 sons who survived to adulthood and had children of their…

On a tangent: more countries named like that: Rhodesia. Bolivia. Colombia. Liechtenstein. Swaziland. Uzbekistan. Denmark. Russia and Belarus.

[deleted]

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#218

Post by nickbauman »

tptacek wrote: post #138
nickbauman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I would be more skeptical. But the assertions Hersh is making about this is so far beyond the "official" narrative, you can't seriously think someone with Hersh's reputation would just make that up? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...

Who said he made anything up? I think the conventional wisdom here is that he is just wrong.

Sure. I just have to ask: How wrong? 10% wrong? 40% wrong? 100% wrong? The dust up over the story begs the question. He can't be 100% wrong.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#219

Post by tptacek »

nickbauman wrote: post #218
tptacek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said he made anything up? I think the conventional wisdom here is that he is just wrong.

Sure. I just have to ask: How wrong? 10% wrong? 40% wrong? 100% wrong? The dust up over the story begs the question. He can't be 100% wrong.

Sure he can. All he has to do is have too much faith in a source that puts him on the wrong narrative --- that Pakistan is deliberately harboring (and concealing) Osama Bin Laden. The rest of his claims fall into place from that, and they all make sense if that's what Pakistan is doing.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#220

Post by s_q_b »

xbmcuser wrote: post #201
jsprogrammer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashing highjacked planes was a known scenario. In fact, FOX broadcast a fictionalized scenario where a commercial airliner was highjacked and set on a crash course with the WTC about six months before 9/11/01.

Tom Clancy's wrote a fictional book about lone mentally disturbed Japanese pilot flying a plane into the pentagon. I read it that book maybe a few weeks before 9/11. Was shocked that the US intelligence didnt see something like this happening when a fiction author did.

Trying to recall the name, but I believe it was a decapitation strike on the Capitol during the State of the Union.
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