I am trying to spend some time on non-food, non-music items because I am personally getting boring. This caught my eye the other day… US to give Saudi Arabia $20 billion in arms. *Edit: sell weapons not give
Aside from the obvious problem that we’re arming people with some pretty sophisticated weaponry, there are numerous other reasons that this is bad.
1. In case everyone forgot, Osama bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia. By providing the Saudis with arms you are further securing the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, which is part of the reason bin Laden is against the US, not to mention a number of terrorists from Saudi Arabia and other countries who will be receiving arms in this deal.
2. Are we not poor enough? We really need to give them $20 billion in weapons, especially after we fund their rentier state with oil money. Rentier states are countries that earn the majority of their GDP from oil. Ruling governments use this money to provide benefits and no taxes to their citizens. However, in the majority of cases this leads to a lack of investment in infrastructure. The less money they have, the sooner the governments will meet their demise. Now, arguably that will lead to instability in the region that the Americans dislike. But the implication is that by then we will have depleted their oil resources and we will throw them away like an empty shell, as we are wont to do. (*Edit: Okay, still similar argument minus the whole… giving money away)
3. I will say that I am pro-Palestinian state. The Balfour Declaration agreed to that, not to mention a few other agreements made by the British back in the day. However, arming these other Middle Eastern countries seems like a VERY bad idea, unless you’re interested in seeing Israel getting blasted back to the Middle Ages.
4. What is this excuse about using the weapons to defend against Iran? If you look at every state on the list, they are major oil producing countries. They are almost all the bad kind of rentier state with a sorry excuse for liberty, with the exception of United Arab Emirates. The US is supporting un-liberty. I seriously doubt that Iran is THAT big of a threat.
