Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Middle East is short on weapons and we're gonna help

You know, kinda like we help out the Israelis, kinda how we trained and armed the Taliban to fight against the evils of Communism...yeah, kinda like that. Since we saw such great results from our previous forays into arms dealings, we decided to keep the ball rolling, this time in Saudi Arabia. President Obama is going ahead with a $60 billion arms deal, the largest in history, to shore up Saudi loyalty against Ahmadinejad and Iran. According to Defense Industry Analysts, this deal is crucial to “US efforts to boost support from Arab allies against Iran.”
You know how they say history repeats itself? Yeah, you know why they say that? Because dumb shits don’t look back and learn from dumb shit mistakes. Let me give you a for example: World War I. What do you get when you write up a bunch of alliances with trigger happy countries? A world war. Only these days, machine guns aren’t the cutting edge of technology. What is? How about 84 new F-15 fighter jets,70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds (all helicopters). That’s the cutting edge of what’s going into the Saudi deal once Congress puts a big check mark by it, using it as a momentary job creator and another reason not to sign off on any significant economic reform. Ah yes, there’s more than one way to skin a nation.
In other shadowy news, this deal would also lock Riyadh into at least another 20 years of favorable diplomacy with the US, something we don’t wanna risk considering their oil fields and arsenal. Clearly, we don’t feel that their dictatorial government, human rights violations (i.e. public beheadings of primarily foreigners) and general lack of a “free society” (i.e. women aren’t allowed to drive, are subject to physical and sexual abuse and extremist Islam is law) is anything to be up in arms about (pun intended). No, that’s for evil wrongdoers like Hussein who had absolutely fuck all to do with the largely Saudi crew of terrorists supposedly behind the 9/11 attacks...oh how the plot thickens.
Amid this haze are more talks of future deals involving naval and missile-defense upgrades worth billions of dollars over the next decade. Anyone find it largely ironic that Obama was awarded a peace prize? So, Mr. President what are you going to do now that you won the peace prize? Oh, I’m gonna send 50,000 more troops to Afghanistan, sell a bunch of weapons to one of the most volatile countries on the planet and then smoke and mirror you into thinking the Iraq war is a “mission accomplished” b/c I brought home some troops and gave it a different operational name. Score! Hey, if I go beat the shit out of my neighbour, sell crack to a child, and then pet a dog I just ran over, can i get a peace prize too?! Give me a fucking break.
Peace is not won, it is earned. Wars are not won, they are always losses. This triangle of well cloaked evil in the form of Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Washington only throws more logs on the flames of hatred for our meddling government as we wave the hypocritical flag of democracy and freedom. This goes beyond a diplomatic backing. This is a direct threat to those countries at unrest in this region which is ummm...all of them. You don’t walk into a snake pit, give one snake a mongoose and flip the other one off. Your ass is gonna get bitten, and rightfully so.
The Obama administration made it very clear that they were going to work towards peace and diplomacy in the Middle East. Everyone bullshits their way through elections but this is just downright inexcusable. However, as per always, it’s only inexcusable if we say that it is and so far, yep, nothing but crickets. Maybe we’re too caught up in the glorious thought of 75,000 new jobs barreling our way. A hungry people is an obedient people. They tell us to look left and we do, ignoring the violation of our trust, our dignity and our safety. The deeper we dig this ditch, the harder it will be to climb out, that’s just simple physics. The more we meddle, the more our name is spread in circles you do’nt want to be mentioned. I don’t want to retire myself to the fear factory, but unfortunately it’s not just depressive realism that dictates we’re on thin ice. Logic, historical events, common sense, diplomacy and intelligence dictate that friends aren’t made on the faulty legs of brown nosing politics. It’s made through hard work, a constant careful dance between compromise and fast morals. That ice we’re standing on is melting under the desert sun and we don’t have a leg to stand on.

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