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Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day. archive
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Don’t you love how Saudi Arabia, the country who was very obviously behind 9/11, hasn’t suffered a single negative consequence as a result of their actions? They literally got away with 9/11. And then the US invaded some unrelated countries. Mind blowing.
When you don’t normalize it, it really is mind blowing. Bush should be in Prison
Remember kids: Iran is the bad Middle East autocracy and Saudi Arabia is the good Middle East autocracy.
US foreign policy has always been and will always be interest based rather than value based, but they will use moral arguments and threat inflation to drum up support for their misadventures abroad.
Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.
Anyway this just means that a straight B-line for no longer being fossil fuel dependent is just more important.
If we can then combine that by sourcing the oil from countries that do not perform stonings and public executions in stadiums, of call it a win.
Keep in mind that not 50 years ago, we had an oil crisis that showed how incredibly depended we where, and the EU learned the hard way what energy dependence on Russia meant.
Solar, Wind and a hydro/Geothermal/nuclear baseload with at least 60 months of stored fission material would be my hope.
Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.
The thing that always amuses me about this is that Iran was a burgeoning liberal democracy until the CIA and MI6 toppled it in 1953, installing a previously overthrown autocrat (overthrown by said forces of democracy), who ruled until 1979, when he was overthrown by religious hard liners, who really only had mass support because the autocrat was too authoritarian.
And the reason the U.S. and Britain overthrew their democracy? They nationalized their oil industry to give profits back to their people, which entailed taking over refineries and wells ‘owned’ by British Petroleum.
The U.S. created their own boogeyman in the area because they wanted to give a corporation near-free access to Iran’s oil. Which in turn lead to the oil crisis and instability in the region.
The U.S. has really got to stop trying to put out fires while covered in crude oil.“Amusing” and yeah the geopolitics of the 50’s and 60’s. The gift that keeps on giving. Especially the interventions done in name of big corporations are wonderful examples of nightmares that just don’t end.
the costly policies that the United States has pursued for the past quarter century have been rooted in a false premise.
No shit
I’m old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. It was never in question that Saudi Arabia was complicit in what happened. The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. It took a bit longer for the fact that the Saudi government was complicit to emerge, but we knew within a short time that at the very least, they provided financial support to the terrorists.
The argument for starting the “war on terror” was that Al-Qaeda planned the attack, so we should attack the countries that harbor them. At the time, the majority of the country supported this; I remember George Bush Jr.'s approval ratings being in the 90s for a short time. Even then, most of us knew that Saudi Arabia was at least complicit in what happened. The lust for revenge, as much as it was justified, made people forget that.
Over the last 23 years, I feel like a lot of Americans have forgotten the role that Saudi Arabia played in the events of 9/11; after all, they’re our “ally,” right? I have always been on the fence regarding whether or not invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea. Back in 2001, though, I felt like invading Saudi Arabia was a great idea. 23 years later, I don’t feel any different. Should the United States have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d say “probably”; should we have attacked Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. Yet it never happened.
I agree with your entire comment except the end.
We shouldn’t have attacked Iraq or Afghanistan. The premise for the war in Iraq was that Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction. That was a flat out lie. The Iraq war and the power vacuum it created led to the creation of ISIS.
Afghanistan had elements of Al-Qaeda present. The Taliban tolerated them. We should have hunted bin Laden there and hit Al-Qaeda where we could find them, but toppling the government was mostly useless and we ended up needing to get the hell out of there after spending $2 trillion dollars, only to have the Taliban return.
Should we have attacked Saudi Arabia though? Absolutely. We should have actually done regime change there and maybe even helped ourselves to the oil revenues to cover the costs of 9/11 and our military. Our presence would’ve also helped modernize their medieval society in ways beneficial to the Middle East.
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Are you referring to the $2 billion U.S. dollars that Saudi Arabia gave to Jared Kushner as an “investment” in his consulting company that has never made a profit for anyone before? The $2 billion Saudi Arabia apparently gave Jared Kushner as a gift that may be related to the extremely valuable government secrets illegally stolen by his father-in-law Donald Trump? That $2 billion?
Saudi got away with killing Americans on American soil. End of that story. They did it, we all know they did it, and no one will do anything about it. That’s just how it works. That’s how all of this works.
