Why is the US taking sides in the Middle East at all -- but especially why is it siding with a bloody tyranny like the Saudi Regime?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Why is the US taking sides in the Middle East at all -- but especially why is it siding with a bloody tyranny like the Saudi Regime?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Why is the US taking sides in the Middle East at all -- but especially why is it siding with a bloody tyranny like the Saudi Regime?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good to see you, sir.
You know, this is a subject that I've chosen today to talk about, which is sort of pretty annoying to me.
It has to do with what's going on in Saudi Arabia.
And there was an article out about how many beheadings that they've done, which is horrible, and there's a lot of different factions around the world that does this.
But one thing that we generally don't talk about is Saudi Arabia, and they're the record holders.
And it looks like they'll have a record for this year.
I think somebody predicted there'd be 192 beheadings in Saudi Arabia.
But the article that came off the internet said that there are 16 things that could get you executed in Saudi Arabia, and execution usually means beheading.
And some are bad crimes, murder, and different things like that.
But others, for our society, are not deserving of the death penalty.
It might be violation of freedom of speech and things like that.
So I wonder what is the real reason why we can get a lot of attention.
And beheading sometimes can be used as a propaganda tool.
You know, how horrible it is to get the American people to say, we've got to go get them, we've got to go get them.
And they did a beheading.
And some of them that have done the beheadings do it on purpose and to draw us in.
But what do you think is the reason that over the years, very little talk about Saudi Arabia?
Yet, you know, they're our good friends.
We've been with Saudis ever since World War II.
And it looks like they get some special treatment from the United States government.
I think that's a lot of the reason why the rest of the world is so annoyed with the U.S., is the hypocrisy of its foreign policy.
Here we were all ginned up to go to war against ISIS because they were beheading a few people and it was pretty gruesome.
But our great allies, the Saudis, behead people at the drop of a hat, literally.
Yeah, and it isn't just a casual friendship with Saudi Arabia.
You know, actually, it was started earnestly in World War II with Roosevelt, and it had to do with oil, and I think most people understand that.
But how much should you excuse, you know, for a barrel of oil?
And if you understand the markets, there should never be that type of an excuse or a need to do this.
But what the people in Saudi Arabia, you know, there's no discussion about this.
There's no discussion here.
But this to me is significant because it has something to do with Saudi Arabia and our ally, our alliance with Saudi Arabia, has a significance for what is developing in the Middle East.
What I see happening now, and it's in the papers, the people talk about the Iranians are going to take over, the Saudis are going to take over, which faction, soon as against the Shia, this is all coming together, the Russians are coming in, and they're very much involved.
And it looks like, you know, there may be a choice made.
Of course, we're making choices all the time in our government.
You know, are we going to be close friends with the Iranians or with the Saudis?
And let's say, I don't want to detail who's the good guy and who's the bad guy between the two.
But let's assume that the Iranians were not as bad as the Saudis.
But what do we do with the Iranians?
We punish them.
We put sanctions on them.
We do everything in the world to punish them, and yet all we do is we make all these excuses for Saudi Arabia.
It really doesn't make any sense.
And even worse, we act as the Saudi Arabia's army and air force.
You know, the Saudis have long wanted to get rid of Assad in Syria because Assad was friendly with the Iranians.
And so what did they do?
They sucked us into their fight.
And here we armed all of these people.
They turned out to be terrorists.
They turned out to be extremists.
And the Saudis in the U.S., they just announced this week they're going to send some more arms to the moderates in Syria.
So we get sucked into being their army and air force.
And what do we get out of it?
We get hostility, we get hated.
But it gets a little more confusing with Yemen because the Saudis indeed want to make sure there's no revolt in Yemen and they want to suppress that country.
But we're bosom buddies with them.
We're helping again, using the weapons.
But I don't think you'd think with America behind Saudi Arabia, this poor country down there, it seems like they should be able to settle that dispute, whether it's right or wrong on how they do it.
It seems like it wouldn't be much of a battle, but that keeps going on and on.
And yet we're allies there with them.
And here we have the hypocrisy again.
Yemen is really, I think, almost a bona fide genocide.
The Saudis have pounded the country into nothingness, mass starvation, mass hunger.
The world is not, this is Rwanda on steroids.
The world has not said a word about it.
You know, the thing about choosing, you know, we've chosen to be the close allies of Saudi Arabia and we just ignore their human rights record.
We do the opposite with Iran.
They have violations as well, but we can't stand them and we do everything to punish them.
Hopefully that is changing a little bit.
But I think as time goes on, we're going to be right in the middle of it again.
I mean, just like we were in the middle of Iraq.
You know, one time we were helping Iraq fight a war against Iran.
Then the next time we fight war against the guy we were helping.
And then we have chaos there and we turn Iraq essentially over to the Iranians.
You'd think we were on the side of the Iranians from our policy.
But as this builds, especially with the Russians in there, America, our policymakers, I don't think we're going to walk away.
We're going to walk away when we're a total failure and maybe incapable of doing anything.
But it seems like we're in the middle of a fight that's getting bigger and bigger.
And it could involve hostilities for our military, even though no boots on the ground.
You know, that's the record.
We can do anything, drones, bombs, sanctions, punish, and everything.
But no boots on the ground, because the American people have spoken.
But we know the boots on the ground are going up in these countries.
And if this becomes a major thing, let's say it gets to the point where Saudis are really in deep trouble.
They're in trouble financially now.
What if we're not able to protect Saudi Arabia?
I mean, I wonder how much it would take for us to be really involved militarily.
That to me sounds like a very dangerous situation.
Well, speaking of dangers, look in Syria now.
With the U.S. and Saudi Arabia deciding to send even more weapons to the opposition, to the rebels, someone pointed out, this is only one degree removed from the U.S. directly fighting the Russians, because these rebels are attacking the Syrian government, which is backed by the Russians right now.
So how far are the interventionists in the U.S. going to push it toward an all-out hot war with Russia over a piece of territory that means very, very little to us?
You know, and I've already indicated that we have to have a choice that somebody's in this government is going to make, Saudis or the Iranians.
But, you know, they never think about another choice and look at the futility of all this because maybe this is a good example of why are we in the middle of it?
Why couldn't we avoid being in the middle of this?
Because it looks like another no-win war for a lot of people.
You know, if you let two people battle it out, if they have these hostilities, but if we weren't involved, just think how many less weapons would be in that area.
But we keep pounding it away.
But the Saudis were running out of money, too, you know, with the oil prices down.
That is sort of unbelievable that a country that wealthy, and so there's going to be disruption.
But they don't even draft their own people to fight the war.
They have to go out and conscript elsewhere to get soldiers to fight.
Yeah, over the weekend, I think it was 10,000 Sudanese mercenaries that they've imported.
And if you remember, the U.S. has condemned Sudan for years and years for the brutality of their army.
And now it turns a blind eye to this army coming into fight in Yemen, which, you know, just to make things that much worse.
But you'd wonder why we do this all the time.
You wonder why they don't see the practicality of having a different policy and the impracticality of doing what they've done with intervention.
And the neocons always come back, you know, yeah, Ron, we agree with you that that place is a mess, but it was all Obama's fault because he took the troops out of Iraq, and that's where ISIS came, which is such a stretch.
You still hear that, you know, but it's still, you wonder whether it's total ignorance or it's contrived to make sure that it's a Republican versus Democrat argument.
Yeah, it's Obama's fault.
It's George Bush's fault.
You know, this whole idea, who was responsible for 9-11, you know, Trump brought this whole thing up.
And I think they missed the whole point for Trump to say that it had something to do with George Bush.
I mean, a couple months after he's in office, I mean, he didn't cause it.
But, you know, it's caused by our policies that do this.
So I don't see why people don't just wake up and say, it's our intervention that is the problem.
It doesn't do any good.
It's bankrupting our country.
We're stirring up more trouble.
We go in there to save the Christians, and yet the Christians end up being in worse shape than ever.
And it doesn't make any sense.
There's probably more beheadings now than there was before we got involved in those countries over there.
So I have a fear that it's going to go on for a while and it's going to probably get worse too.
Well, I remember you say Osama told us what his beef was with the U.S., but they didn't want to listen to the actual reasons they said.
Yeah, you know, that is.
Nobody even wants to hear it now because he was there very explicit.
And I think Michael Schur, who was a real expert on Osama bin Laden, in that way, he says there were three reasons why they called this up.
It was the way they were treating the Palestinians.
It was the constant bombing and devastation of Of the country of Iraq and military bases in Saudi Arabia.
Choose Wisely!00:01:40
And guess what?
Wolfowitz admitted afterwards, he says, Yeah, that's probably right.
That antagonized them.
Let's take our troops off the soil of Saudi Arabia.
So that is an ongoing problem because we haven't awakened and decided that a different foreign policy is necessary.
But we are approaching the time where I think the conflict between the support for the Iranian factions versus the support for the Saudi faction will get much worse because in that mix we will also have Israel involved and Israel right now get along a lot better with Saudi Arabia regardless of their human rights program than they do with the Iranians.
But now with the door slightly open with dealing and trading with the Iranians, it may change significantly.
But all I know is there should be a very strong position for the American people.
Don't get in the middle of another conflict which is building, the big fight between the Saudi faction versus the Iranian faction.
If we pick and choose there, we're in trouble.
We should pick and choose by saying, yes, we'll try to be friends and trading partners with these countries, but we're not going to dictate policy.
We're not going to get involved in a military sense.
And we shouldn't have these entangling alliances that compel us to do it.
And we should never get involved without the permission of the people and the Congress.
That would stop a lot of trouble.
And I believe when that option is offered to the American people, they will choose this option of less warmongering and more sensible position of less intervention.
Let's hope so.
Thank you very much for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.