Fareed Zakaria's Breakthrough: Saudi Sponsorship of Terrorism
Fareed Zakaria has published at the Washington Post and declared on CNN that:
"Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran."
His column of May 25 is a significant breakthrough. He is a mainstream media spokesperson. He's speaking the truth. And he's still alive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/saudi-arabia-jus...
How Saudi Arabia played Donald Trump
By Fareed Zakaria
May 25, 2017This week’s bombing in Manchester, England, was another gruesome reminder that the threat from radical Islamist terrorism is ongoing. And President Trump’s journey to the Middle East illustrated yet again how the country central to the spread of this terrorism, Saudi Arabia, has managed to evade and deflect any responsibility for it. In fact, Trump has given Saudi Arabia a free pass and a free hand in the region.
The facts are well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists.
And we know, via a leaked email from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group of foreign fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.
The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam...
Saudi money is now transforming European Islam. Leaked German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques, schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant version of Islam throughout Germany.
In Kosovo, the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall describes the process by which a 500-year-old tradition of moderate Islam is being destroyed. “From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Shariah law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam.”...
Trump’s speech on Islam was nuanced and showed empathy for the Muslim victims of jihadist terrorism (who make up as much as 95 percent of the total, by one estimate). He seemed to zero in on the problem when he said, “No discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists . . . safe harbor, financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment.”
But Trump was talking not of his host, Saudi Arabia, but rather of Iran. Now, to be clear, Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East and supports some very bad actors. But it is wildly inaccurate to describe it as the source of jihadist terror. According to an analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by Leif Wenar of King’s College London, more than 94 percent of deaths caused by Islamic terrorism since 2001 were perpetrated by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists. Iran is fighting those groups, not fueling them. Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.
Trump has adopted the Saudi line on terrorism, which deflects any blame from the kingdom and redirects it toward Iran. The Saudis showered Trump’s inexperienced negotiators with attention, arms deals and donations to a World Bank fund that Ivanka Trump is championing. (Candidate Trump wrote in a Facebook post in 2016, “Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!”) In short, the Saudis played Trump...
The United States has now signed up for Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy — a relentless series of battles against Shiites and their allies throughout the Middle East. That will enmesh Washington in a never-ending sectarian struggle, fuel regional instability and complicate its ties with countries such as Iraq that want good relations with both sides. But most important, it will do nothing to address the direct and ongoing threat to Americans — jihadist terrorism. I thought that Trump’s foreign policy was going to put America first, not Saudi Arabia.
Comments
hope you're right, big man.
full respect to Mr. Nasrallah, for saying it out loud.
shows just how gutless, clueless & complicit our "progressive leadership" really is.
"ISIS must be destroyed" - Bernie (the Hope) Sanders
more simple-minded sloganeering from Mr Helper. Russia!
gee whiz.
The more I look at some more esoteric sources of information
from the countries we are attacking, the more I have come to the realization that it is the American public who, for the most part, don't have a fucking clue about what is going on the world. This also includes many who believe they are well informed by the MSM.
The ubiquitous of the internet allows people, on who's heads we have been dropping bombs for decades, to know why it's being done to them. There's more truth on the streets of Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran and Sana'a than in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle or Miami and all the towns and cities between.
It's only on rare moments when we get unadulterated truth such this report from Zak. Unfortunately, it is not enough to make up for all the other crap he has been feeding the American public from CNN's slop trough.
Salman,
our supposed King:
Defense Intelligence report
of 2012:
This is what Michael Flynn, who became Director of Defense Intelligence that summer, objected to.
thanks Linda
bookmarked
Zionism is a social disease
The only terrorism attributed to Iran happened in Buenos Aires
1992 attack on Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires
My sister ended up in the hospital (she lived across the street) and she was extremely lucky.
The other act happened 2 years later at the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association
The political revolution continues
@Shockwave The attack on the
The attack on the American embassy in the 70s gets dumped into the general category of "terrorism" these days, though it wasn't called that at the time.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal That was not
That was not "terrorism". One of my friends (eventually he became a general) was one of the hostages and he was not terrorized. An act of war perhaps.
The political revolution continues
@Shockwave I don't consider it
I don't consider it terrorism. But we're living in an age where words like "terrorism" cover an awful lot of ground. And I'm pretty sure the marketing of Iran as a Big Danger is relying on the cultural memory of that incident.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
After all, our embassy DID run the 1953 coup against Mossadegh
Would our embassy in 1979 be the operations center of a last-ditch effort to sabotage the revolution and somehow save the Shah?
The students’ point of view was, “Oh, no, they don’t. This time let’s play it safe.”
@lotlizard I don't disagree.
I don't disagree. Even though I admit it was distressing to watch, as a child, I don't actually disagree.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Terrorism aims at both random and specific targets
Innocent people killed, starved, displaced. "Enemies" killed first and then interrogated later. Oh, say, doesn't this sound like the Exceptional Amerikkkan state? Nah, couldn't be.
I've never liked those damned yellow ribbons
probably because that was the first time I'd seen them used. Probably 1 American in a thousand knew the back story of why the embassy was taken over.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
There is no definitive proof that Iran was directly involved
in this attack. The underground urban guerrilla organization, Islamic Jihad Organization, did a lot of independent terrorist operations on their own initiative. Remember some of the US financed mujaheddin groups in Afghanistan eventually went on to kill Americans.
The stated reason for the Buenos Aires attack was as a response to the assassination of al Moussawi by the Israelis. Keep in mind that Mossad's motto at that time was "By way of deception thou shalt make war." False flags, black flags, murder, deceit, subterfuge were all par for the course in those days (and still continue to a certain extent).
Very smart on the part of Zakaria--
he inserted all that info in the frame of "Isn't Donald Trump a Stupid, Venal Asshole" which is a big establishment favorite right now, and explains how he got it published in the Washington Post, the CIA's very own paper.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I don't think the Saudis played Trump...
I think Trump knew he was politically outgunned (and he damned well was), so he went around and made an independent deal with the Saudis which trumped (heh) the one they had with the Clintons (and, I guess, the Bushes? since the Bushes and Clintons are basically moving together these days...).
Politically, it's actually a smart (if morally horrific and hypocritical) move. Probably one he wouldn't have made if he'd been able to make a deal with Russia instead.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
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