Reply #97: The Saud Royalty turned [View All]

[Fovea]

the wahabbists into a hate motivated sect pointed at modernity.

The CIA taught them asymmetrical warfare.
The Bush Family gave them weapons and pointed them at godless communism.

It seemed like a smart idea at the time by all the best men.
Rummy was selling poison to Saddam to kill Iranians who hated his godless socialism
enough to send teenage boys in human wave attacks again sarin nerve gas.
Condi was about to earn her oil tanker by humping central asian despots.

Saddam's Iraq officially protected Shia, Sunni, Christian (his cabinet had a major figure who was Christian), and Jews.
The new Iraq, not so much. Yes, Saddam was a megalomanical strongman, but the baathist party seems to favor them, and I don't see us
putting the same sort of effort against megalomanical strongmen not sitting on the world's second largest reserve of sweet crude.

As we have also seen, Iraq is a hard creature to nourish. It is a third camel, a third papyrus, and a third oil pipeline. It was a modern affectation, a nation made of other people's problems, and glued in place by oil and the need for a counter-weight to Iran and the SSRs. It was the land BP would not let die.

Pakistan is the sad armpit of the last incarnation of the great game. It is the curse laid upon Moslem Indians who could not abide a Hindu replacement for the Raj.
They inherited the tribal lands, and the toxic things it produces. As far as I am concerned, Pakistan answers the Miltonian question. It IS better to serve in heaven.