If you ever get invited to the "Future Investment Initiative" aka "Davos in the Desert", NEVER GO THERE.
More like "Despots in the Desert".
I feel for the Saudi people, but fuck their corrupt, useless monarchy. They could at least aspire to be Singapore, but I guess 100 gold-plated Rolls Royces and stupid giant infrastructure projects strokes the ego more - lame as fuck...
* Looks longingly at my invite to Davos in the Desert. *
* Let's it gingerly slip from my fingers into the fire pit, as a single tear falls in the flames. *
/jk.
Sarcasm aside, I don't understand why the West kowtows to Saudi's. I feel like maybe they were more culpable in 9/11 than previously thought, they are constantly doing shit, that even China would think twice about (they'd reeducate and do concentration camps, but perhaps not straight up executions).
I know it probably involves money, etc - but we need to put our partnerships with others to a smell test, if that country that wants to partner up, or do business with Americans has a horrible human rights record, they should be on the banned countries list like NK and Iran.
If only politics weren't legal organized crime, perhaps we could instill some values in our nations leaders and businesses to cease supporting despots.
Our whole Middle East policy is based on oil price stability, but with the Saudi's recently decreasing production, we're not getting that either, so fuck 'em.
I'd prefer we worked with Iran, a far more broadly educated / liberal society (not gov't) that we can work with and who can be productive beyond oil production. But even better I really like the Venezuelan oil production plan.
Long-term, I'd love to see an energy independence bill come out that would allow short-term US oil/gas production, sourcing from allies, and a rapid de-carbonization of our society.
Look into the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 report and the recently released testimony of Zacharias Mousaui. The hijackers were funded by members of the Saudi royal family, specifically Bandar bin Sultan nicknamed Bandar Bush for his close ties to the Bush family, and his wife who was sending money to the hijackers.
For two, they may want to establish a parliamentary republic to safely avoid the fate of those from which the Saudi family's ancestors originally usurped executive power. Currently, there is only one method of establishing a new government in what is only tenuously Saudi Arabia, which is using the old ways of sneaking into the palace at night with jambiyas and assassinating everyone. My suspicion is that this inevitable coup will be composed entirely of women.
Watching TV is not experience by doing it. Maybe more often counterproductive, because stunts and CGI distort your expectations :-)
Not to mention that most food doesn't struggle anymore, after the initial butchering. Or having an intuition about something feels wrong here and alertness because of that.
They probably read a lot, too. But I think you're missing the point, because what they may lack in melee experience and exquisite jambiaya skill they more than make up for in guile and fury, especially when scorned, and all women in Saudi Arabia effectively live their entire lives in a state of being scorned. Saudi Arabia is basically a ticking time bomb.
It may be a chicken and egg thing. Maybe sexual discrimination, sexist repression and misogyny are a reaction to some earlier male catastrophe, and every few thousand years the scales tip in calamity back in that direction, and patriarchy slowly makes gains over centuries until back on top in repressing women, the process repeating when women have had enough.
Ancient mythologies have plenty of examples of women taking power from the men - cf the story of Lemnos in the myth of the Argonauts, where women killed all the men.
The thing I find most heartbreaking is that I'm 99% sure this will go the way of the Jeddah Tower (too much corruption/dictatorship for clever plans to be made and the project gets cancelled).
It's also not the smartest project, a quick look at their website shows you genius ideas like this 170km long line they want to build in the middle of nowhere: https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
Not to mention that Saudi Arabia doesn't even have any issues with population density. They are building these cities like they have some overpopulation issues, such a waste of money. A shame it's not being spent on things that would help Saudi Arabia in the long term.
Neom might just be the best argument against totalitarianism, such stupid ideas wouldn't even be up for consideration in a free(er) country. Just looking at the website makes me so sad, it legitimately feels like some passion project of a megalomaniac who doesn't care for the wellbeing of his people.
> Neom might just be the best argument against totalitarianism, such stupid ideas wouldn't even be up for consideration in a free(er) country. Just looking at the website makes me so sad, it legitimately feels like some passion project of a megalomaniac who doesn't care for the wellbeing of his people.
If Ryugyong got finished, so will Jeddah. It's not smart investment, but in general monuments aren't. Yet, humanity learns to appreciate them non the less, even fully appreciating the "folly".
It's "finished" as a wasteful potemkin monument - it's not an embarassing concrete shell anymore. It's not finished in the usefully occupied building sense, which would probably be even more wasteful. Operation costs will be stupid for little gain. IMO that's how Jeddah will eventually go, the prince will find the change to finish the tower. It'll look really cool while bleeding money.
Their leader MBS completely got away with murdering Kashoggi in cold blood and having absolutely no repurcussions not even politically. The USA treats them as a first class political ally.
Most of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Between murdering reporters, hosting terrorist groups, and horrible human rights abuses....There's literally nothing Saudi Arabia can do to get any repercussions for anything.
Yes. Similarly, Pakistani intelligence knew where Bin Laden was. Oh wait, SOME Pakistani intelligence knew. The issue we're seeing is internecine conflict and a lack of effective governance. Saying the hijackers were Saudis so therefore the entire House of Saud is liable is reductive at best.
I'm not defending said House, but OTOH blaming the most public power base for everything associated with the country ignores the fact that they don't have control over their own power bases (much like Pakistan, a total s-hole that I can't wait until we're disengaged from).
I'm Pakistani, it's not a s-hole. It's a lovely country full of lovely people who are helpless against the burden of colonial legacy, corrupt landowners and a way-too-powerful army.
It’s possible for people to be “lovely” but also the reason for why the country is in bad shape. I’m Bangladeshi, and folks there are very kind. My dad has stories of traveling through rural parts of the country and a villager walking miles out of his way to make sure he got back to his car without getting lost.
But they’re also a big part of the reason why things are the way they are. From the tolerance of corruption, to the lack of organization. You can say the exact same things about parts of the US that other parts of the US would regard as “shit holes” (rural Georgia or Mississippi). People are very nice! But that’s not sufficient for a developed civilization.
100% agree with your comment. Culture makes the people and the people make the culture.
My point is more that the feedback loop is something that was put in place generations ago and most people are just stuck in it. We should pity such people, not despise them.
To be clear, I don’t think we should “despise” anyone and I wouldn’t call any place a “shit hole” because it’s rude.
But insofar as the term is commonly used as a shorthand to describe places marked by dysfunction, Pakistan (and to be fair Bangladesh) fit the bill—notwithstanding nice people, great food, and pretty scenery.
I’m terms of real gdp per capita, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India is richer than the US was when it had been a stable multiparty democracy for more than half a century already. You know what was poor? Utah when the Mormons first got there. Hostile wasteland, not like Bangladesh where fish jump out of ponds into your pot. But look what they managed to do with land nobody wanted.
No, I disagree, I don't know where you get your number from, I couldn't find anything to support your argument. I don't believe anything about GDP anyway. For rich country, GDP means how much they can rob; for poor countries, GDP is how many slaves you have. Poverty is a downward cycle unfortunately, democracy is not going to help with anything.
There comes a point where you have to stop blaming colonialism for the corruption of your own people. Pakistan has been an independent country for 75 years.
That's barely 2-3 generations vs 350 years of colonialism. Most of government and the civil service is aligned around colonial lines with heavy weightage on the top. As other commentators have pointed out, systemic poverty and a lack of education prevent the kind of uplifting that would allow the country to shrug off colonialism.
I think there's been a pretty strong upward trend, but not much compared to South Korea for sure.
We had a setback in the 70s, first with the war with India and then 80s where Zia weaponized religion (with western support!) to fight the USSR in Afghanistan. We're still reeling from that. All the nastiest laws you read about in the news (death to blasphemers, rape victims getting jailed for adultery) are from that era.
But I think if you look at poverty, literacy graphs etc, you'll see an upward trend. Even democracy seems stronger than it was when I was a child, though I think we've regressed when it comes to media freedom.
I remember Zakir Naik pointing out that the US has the death sentence for revealing military secrets and no one blinks an eyelid; that apostasy is a kind of treason that people don't so much support, it's just a matter of fact.
Religion is easy [0]. Those who commit apostasy are given time to reflect and repent to become muslim again, it is not like they are not given chance to turn back and live.
That's a fair statement, and I should have been more clear about separating views of the government, sects of the government, and many of the actual people.
If that's your only criteria, the US must be the worst of the lot for ethnically cleansing an entire continent to claim it.
I grew up in the 90s and remember the ecstatic cheering when Bangladesh won its first cricket match. The decisions that led to that genocide were topdown driven by a racist military brass, not ordinary people who were told that all the fighting was against India.
Of course that doesn't excuse the genocide and everyone who partook should be treated no different from a Nazi but you can't lump the entire population in with that.
Bullshit. In World War 2 when the Nazis invaded Western Europe my grandparents joined the resistance. I have no respect for people who just let things happen. What’s worse is all those who flee from Pakistan to Western countries are all able bodied males. The ones that evolutionary speaking are best set up to join the resistance.
There's not much point being part of a resistance when the large majority of your countrymen are opposed to you and your values. Resisting foreign invaders is one thing, and makes sense: the invaders are generally a small fraction of the size of the populace, and are using some type of force to gain control. But resisting the majority of your country's population is something altogether different, and really quite futile.
Pakistanis who flee Pakistan because they don't want to live that way are doing the right thing; most people there like the way things are there, so trying to change their opinions is not likely to go well, and very likely to get you imprisoned or killed.
I think you don't realize that when something is all you've ever known, you don't realize it's wrong. I know a lot of those immigrants who went abroad to study, swearing they'd come home to improve things, but once they were abroad they realized how much better life is with the freedoms in the UK or US. And once they realized that, they wanted to raise their families in that environment. Would you grudge them that?
I wish you would edit your comment to indicate that the country of Pakistan is not a s-hole but the current government is and possibly also the fanatical religious culture is.
The fanatical religious culture is an integral part of the overall culture of the people of that country. It's not being forced on them by some outsiders.
No, it's being enforced by empowered insiders. That's the culture the British created (ie. empowered insiders in their pay/control exploiting divisions and racial hate to subjugate a populace).
The British left, but those insiders and the "elite" culture is still there.
I also think that s-hole is not an appropriate description of Pakistan. Saying that, the frequently used idea that countries with extreme human rights violations are just "bad governments" is very reductionary. Similar to Russia, it's not just Putin, it's the society that shares certain values. I am not inviting to demonize any society or culture either — but to accept that these problems have deeper roots than a corrupt goverment or religious extremists with power.
Especially sad given that, in my opinion, this project is doomed to fail anyway— a 21st century Tower of Babel. The plans for a year-round ski resort seem especially ridiculous given the relatively mild climate in the Sarawat mountains.
The tricky thing about calling something a Tower of Babel is that it’s one thing to build the first one, it’s quite something else to build a second knowing about the first. This linear city idea is worse than the planned city they built in, Brazil? That was more 2 dimensional at least.
So this one goes up instead of out, but you’ll notice for instance the gap for the stadium. Stadiums are a bottleneck in regular cities. All traffic in the whole city has to drive past the stadium if they want to get somewhere on the other side, and with the gaps it’s a double choke point.
The Architect’s Sketch, Monty Python:
“Are you proposing to slaughter our tenants?” “… does that not fit in with your plan?” “[…] no it’s just that we wanted a block of flats, and not an abattoir” “Yes, well of course, that’s just the sort of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect from you lot of non-creative garbage.”
The other candidate’s scale model breaks twice, and catches fire and then explodes. They decide that thin, sedentary tenants should avoid those problems.
It wouldn't be the first linear city. The idea was popular in the early 20th century for industrial settlements. Magnitogorsk was orginally planned as such. None of the planned linear cities have stayed linear, to my knowledge. It only makes sense for when the whole point of living there is to operate a massive production line.
I don't think that not traveling to Saudi Arabia will effect them at all. It's never really been a tourist destination unless you count Muslims on the haj. If you really want to protest then stop using oil. Sure most oil sold in the US isn't from SA, but if we started using a lot less of the stuff prices would go down and that would effect SA.
I'd say if you really want to protest them, then petition the US government to...
1. Stop selling KSA and UAE weapons.
2. Reduce or cancel sanctions sanctioning on Iran, Syria and Lebanon (regimes the KSA has tried to undermine).
3. Make public arguments against the Saudi occupation of Bahrain.
4. Yemen:
4.1 Arrange a weapons embargo on KSA while their Yemen campaign continue
4.2 Ensure safe passage to naval and air vessels to Yemen
4.3 Send some humanitarian aid to Yemen (they need it at least as much, and probably more, than Ukraine)
4.4 Recognize the Houthi grievances in Yemen and support peace talks and a federated resolution of the Yemeni civil war.
5. Join the ICC and sue MBS' ass for chopping up Jamal Khasokgi. (Ok, the US will never do that, it has too much culpability of its own.)
The entire Middle East would be significantly better of than it is today if the "west" (mostly the UK, US, and France) had simply not invaded or significantly interfered with any middle eastern country from WWII onwards (so no coups, for starters).
Unfortunately it's a little too late for that, so we're left with the current clusterfuck of a situation.
1.) While the UAE and Qatar were initially in the Saudi camp at the start of the war, they have both since left the field - Qatar because their plan was a token response from the start, and the UAE because of significant casualties (and a petition from the mother of a slain soldier).
2.) Iran is currently beating up and killing their own population for protesting. Syria used chemical gas against their own population for protesting. Lebanon is basically Iran's little Mediterranean bitch. You would like us to unsanction these regimes??
3.) Saudi Arabia hasn't been occupying Bahrain - KSA and the UAE "monitor" it on behalf of the Emir of Bahrain. A better way to rephrase this would be: force the Emir out and let the people of Bahrain decide for themselves.
4.) Yes, the West should embargo the Saudis on weapon sales. Not that it would affect them much since they'll just buy from Russia and China, but that is the moral path.
5.) Ask the Houthis for safe naval and air passage in Yemen. They're the ones causing disruptions in the area.
6.) Any humanitarian aid to Yemen somehow ends up with the Houthis.
7.) Houthis don't have any "grievances". Yemen has been divided between a Sunni half and a Shia half since the start of Islam. For the most part historically, Yemen was largely Sunni-dominated. It's only recently that the Houthis are able to put up a fight, and that's largely due to Iranian support and funding.
9.) Leaving the Houthis alone will only let Iran's theocracy impose their own puppet in the area. That is not something the world needs.
10.) Sure, sue MBS, but that's just opening a whole other can of worms.
Like it or not, Iran is just as bad as Saudi Arabia. Both countries rely on a modus operandi of training terrorists and spreading them abroad to cause chaos and fear, and ultimately acquiescence. On that front, Saudi Arabia is still a better ally, since most of the Gulf monarchies have come to the realization that supporting religious fundamentalists abroad has been a retarded thing to do because they'll return to fuck up their monarchical systems later on.
> Like it or not, Iran is just as bad as Saudi Arabia.
Indeed. Though there's much more hope that Iran will experience some kind of regime change given it's young population that's becoming increasingly dissatisfied with religious rule.
Yeah, that's a fairly recent development, and if it happens, I'm all the more up for it. In my experience, although the governments of both countries are equally horrible, the Iranian people tend to have a much stronger moral compass than the Saudi people when it comes to things like in the original article - indigenous rights, or labor rights of lower class workers, and obviously women's rights, etc.
Iran helped lebanon resist israeli occupation and defeated isis in syria.
Also what is the obsession with calling middle eastern countries “regimes”? Lebanon has had elections and government changes throughout its history.
Also please dont forget who funded isis. Iran has no equivalent “religious extremists”, isis is on a whole other level.
In syria and lebanon, you have countless christians and even sunnis that support iran. In fact, overwhelming christians support iran since the sunni counterpart has shown itself much more hostile to other faiths.
2. UAE is generally aligned with KSA on many/most issues, not just Yemen. As for Yemen - IIANM, they back the "Southern Transitional Council", which holds a large part of the country's territory including Aden.
3. KSA sent tanks into Bahrain when things got out of hand, and backs the kingdom financially and militarily as necessary. It has also apparently been involved in inwards population transfer to alter the demographic balance for better average subservience. So, it's technically not an occupation, but maintaining a monarchy opposed by the population is pretty close.
4. Some international cooperation could lead to a global weapons embargo on KSA. Of course, the US is not much for international cooperation these days, but still.
5. Don't remember the Houthis having much sway over US and Saudi air and naval forces in the region, which would be necessary for a naval blockade.
6. Not really + it's fine if a lot of it ends up in the Houthi-controlled areas - a lot of the population is there after all, and they're the side which is most besieged, right?
7. Oh, people have grievances alright. You just gave one reason yourself: Sunni domination. I'm sure it's more complicated than that. Yemen has had 33 years under the control of the same president, with KSA support, which given the nature of that regime - I'm sure has not been a lot of fun for the population. Poverty and corruption have apparently been plaguing Yemen for a long while now. As for "Iranian support and funding" - I would not be surprised if the extent of it are overblown. At least early in the civil war (2015), even the US NSC acknowledged that "It remains our assessment that Iran does not exert command and control over the Houthis in Yemen" (quoted in Wikipedia).
8. No number 8?
9. You seem to be squarely on the KSA side of things. Do you have evidence to back up the claim that the North-Western/Houthi rebel movement is planning on making Yemen a Shia theocracy? Plus, the Houthis are not even from the same religious current as the Iranians, and don't recognize the Twelve divinely-chosen Imams etc.
> Like it or not, Iran is just as bad as Saudi Arabia.
Not remotely. Saudi Arabia is an order of magnitude worse both internally and externally. I believe your view is colored by how the US paints Iran, which is motivated first and foremost by the fact that Iran freed itself from US imperial control with the 1979 revolution. Yes, the post-1979 Iranian government is a semi-democratic theocracy, militaristic and quite repressive - but that's still nowhere near the extremely warped, corrupt monarchy of the KSA.
> Saudi Arabia is still a better ally
Ah, so I've wasted this whole reply, since your perspective is that of the USA. Yeah, well, I guess it is a better ally for you - because it's been an effective force in suppressing liberation struggles in the region, and a decent trading partner. It's no "ally" of the people of the region, though.
Why the sudden China bashing? China has more EV uptake than the U.S., in fact they pretty much invented the electric micro-car as a market, because of the density of their cities.
The reality is that U.S. is more dependent on oil than any other major industrialized economy. We consume more than the EU, and we consume almost as much as Asia, despite being some small fraction of that continent's population.
At this point, who would want to? Genuinely. I haven't any idea. I'm a huge F1 fan and F1 racing there feels like such a bizarre move, and it's one that has almost put me off the sport. Dirty money and F1 go together like mac and cheese but this feels like a new low for them.
So in other words, by doing nothing in particular. A protest where you don't change your behavior in any way and don't have to bear any cost is not much of a protest.
Actually, the best protest of Saudi Arabia was carried out by Mayoshi Son of SoftBank. He working with such people as Adam Neumann of WeWork lit billions of dollars worth of Saudi money on fire. A few more years of this, and Saudi won't be able to afford to do stunts like this.
Saudi Arabia will continue to be an oasis no matter the change in climate, as long as they have enough oil to burn for air conditioning. Construction projects can be protected with inflatable tents, for example.
This should be a reminder that the U.S. cares nothing for human rights violations and whenever it voices such complaints it does so for other selfish Geopolitical reasons that are maybe not revealed. This goes for any of the other Geopolitical powers as well. Let's not be useful idiots.
A better way to look at this is to recognize that geopolitics involve a multitude of political, economic, cultural, etc aspects. It's not that the US cares nothing for human rights violations, it's that we often prioritize different aspects. Caring does not imply a specific action.
Absolutely not trying to justify the relationship between the US and UAE. However, a maximalist position rarely leads to a positive change when so many parties and interests are involved.
The US is not monolitic. People who characterize it thusly do so do not capture the intentional-by-design unstable nature of the system. It remains, nonetheless, up to to 'us' to be not useful idiots.
The "line city" is possibly the worst idea of the 21st century. I will honestly be shocked if it goes over any better than the "world islands" they tried to build in Dubai.
I had not read this concept before now, but it really sounds as if someone played too much halo and didn't understand the real-world math that makes that a "good idea" in space.
In my eyes this appears to be further evidence as to why a combination or extreme wealth inequality and centralized authority is counterproductive to a nation's continued prosperity.
For all its concentration of wealth and authority, Saudia Arabia is clearly squandering its power in favor of misguided projects of ego.
I do not see a long-term future for a government such as this which has decided to behave in the same manner as a spoiled mewling child.
Personal guilty pleasure: love me some stupidendously wasteful ego driven mega monuments. A mega city in the desert even better. Not enough grand architecture by liberal world order. There are insideous human costs to everything, and all things considered, rare hubris mega construction projects are pretty good generational cultural value. Even after they fall into to ruin.
Sounds like normal day in Belarus or other less democratic country. I really don’t understand why these people choose death over other alternatives. It’s not that they didn’t know what is awaiting them. Killing some protesters is absolutely normal is less democratic country.
While Neom project is cool for sure I am not so sure if it’s clever one. But let’s see how this car-less city in a desert experiment ends. It’s better in my eyes than stealing all the oil money and buying yachts for the buddies like russian government did it.
The West stands for many things. The West also prioritizes different things at different times. Getting into a conflict with UAE while Europe is on the brink of a massive energy supply crisis would potentially weaken the West even more. I am sure the West is not loving the situation with human rights in UAE, but picks its battles wisely (albeit at the cost of human suffering in UAE).
If you care about this, now is the time to call your representatives. There is a sea change underway in Congress on Riyadh [1]. It’s on a precipice. This isn’t campaign-issue material. If Americans don’t care to reach out, the status quo will hold.
As long as we use their oil, it doesn't accomplish much. President Biden practically begged them to increase oil production in the wake of the Russia/Ukraine war and they refused. It's time the US at least stops approving weapons sales to SA.
Not sure calling your congressperson will have a lot of effect. Do everything you can to minimize your use of oil. If enough of us do that then oil prices will go down and that will effect SA.
> Not sure calling your congressperson will have a lot of effect
It does because most people don’t do it. So you get aides tallying phone calls to help an elected take a position on a fringe issue (Saudi relations are fringe in most districts and states) possibly a day or two before the vote.
> Do everything you can to minimize your use of oil
This is harder and less effective. (You should still do it, for the environment.)
Ok, so you call your congressman and tell them you don't like SA and that we should... do what? Have our ambassador file a protest? That's going to be effective how?
Yes, using less oil is harder than calling your congressperson because you actually have to change behavior and perhaps live with some inconvenience. But it's hard to see how it's less effective at this point.
Go ahead and to both. The call is easy. But the underlying reason that the US has been overly accommodating to SA (including selling them military equipment) is because we are heavily dependent on oil and oil is a global market so we need SA to keep production up.
We should cut them off militarily. They buy American weapons because they have infinite money and the Americans have the best shit. That's what the bill floating through Congress is trying to accomplish. Calling your congressman to tell them to vote yes on cutting off Saudi can move the needle here.
> so you call your congressman and tell them you don't like SA and that we should... do what?
Unless you know the policy space, expressing a broad position is enough. If you know something about the policy space, e.g. see the Politico article in my last comment, you can specify bills. But that’s complicated and prone to misinterpretation and generally only productive when coördinated.
> it's hard to see how it's less effective
Oil demand is elastic [1]. Its supply is manipulated. A barrel of oil not consumed by you reduces marginal prices and cracking spreads. That, in turn, spurs demand. For Riyadh, it would take a massive amount of demand destruction to him up their revenues given their influence over OPEC.
Yep, they're helping Europe replace some of the oil and gas from Russia. Best European friends these days! As long as they don't invade a neighbour they're great... oh wait, weren't they heavily involved in the worst war in the world at present, in Yemen, with over 150k dead and the prospect of 10 million dead of starvation directly caused by that [1]?! Right, but those people dying are not white European so no one gives a shit.
Everybody already knows about the impending breakup. All that's left is for the two parties to make it official.
The US is tired of the relationship, the Saudis are sort of getting along with Israel, and they are quipping about how they can get thier weapons from Russia.
"Craziest" is not really an appropriate word for this case. Awful, or shameful, or disgraceful are some more accurate words. Or insane if you want to emphasize the psychotic aspect.
I'm wondering why the USA hasn't used its military muscle to force regime change in Saudi Arabia. They have valuable resources, and I don't think any major country would stand in the USA's way.
The people already live under a brutal repressive dictatorship. Why not replace it with something more tolerable?
My best guess is that doing so would dramatically increase terrorism in the region.
Venezuela would be another area in need of intervention, IMO.
Update: I'm as anti-war as it gets, but consider: when is there a moral imperative to act? If you could stop the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, should you? If you can stop your neighbor from going on a murdering spree, should you?
Are you a soldier? Are you going to be the one invaded? "intervention" is even such a bloodless euphemism for sending men with guns, bombs, drone strikes, murder, rape, looting to another place. You should be ashamed of yourself for saying something like this so glibly like it was a change to some programming technology or something
You’ve apparently never heard the phrase “You break it, you bought it” as it applies to international affairs.
Say we do invade Saudi Arabia, and/or Venezuela, as you suggest. Please share the highlights of your post-war governance plan. Do we send a bunch of our people in there to rule the country? Do they become our de-facto territories? What do we do about the all-but-certain never-ending resistance campaigns from people who legitimately want self-determination? What if we give them that self-determination, and they decide to vote in someone even worse than who’s currently in power?
Your comment shows an almost complete lack of understanding of even the last 20 years of geo-political conflict. The fact that you tacked on “I’m as anti-war as it gets” at the end can only be interpreted as a troll move.
The people of Saudi and Venezuela already don't have self-determination! They are ruled by brutal dictatorship today.
As far as post-war governance, I suggest the Marshall plan. Japan and Germany are models for how to occupy a country with great results.
I feel like because the USA has made mistakes, people jump to a defeatist attitude and take the position that literally anything we do is a mistake by definition.
>As far as post-war governance, I suggest the Marshall plan. Japan and Germany are models for how to occupy a country with great results.
They tried something like that in Afghanistan, and it was a complete disaster. ~1945 Japan and Germany were completely different countries from Saudi Arabia or any other country you're proposing an invasion of; attempting to set up a friendly government in those places is likely to be about as successful as Afghanistan was.
> I feel like because the USA has made mistakes,...
The Iraq War was not a "mistake", as you suggest. The Bush administration launched a war that killed between 200,000 and 1 million-plus people (depending on whether you strictly count bodies, which tends to under-count the reality, or you extrapolate from random samples of the population). This war was based on the claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger, and this claim was based on a set of documents that were proven to be forgeries: "Mohamed ElBaradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that his staff and independent experts concluded within hours that the documents were forged. They were printed, after all, on obsolete Iraqi and Niger letterheads citing officials who were no longer in power at agencies that had been disbanded. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was reportedly signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who left office in 1989." [1].
This wasn't a "mistake". This was either incompetence past the level of recklessness, or malice.
The most charitable explanation I've heard for why the US launched the 2003 Iraq War was that the Bush administration knew that steamrolling a weak adversary like the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't a sufficient show-of-force to deter a well-equipped adversary from attempting another 9/11, and they needed to demonstrate the ability and willingness to attack a more powerful adversary (such as Iraq) to produce such deterrence. The least charitable explanation is the one we're all familiar with- that Bush, Cheney and Co. wanted to install a regime who would provide a steady stream of oil at friendly prices. The reality is probably a mix of both, as well as other explanations that we'll never be privy to.
Any way you slice it, the U.S. has proven itself incapable of delivering on its promises of regime change and nation-building since since at least the Vietnam War, yet keeps telling itself that "this time we'll get it right". The end result is that, trough our callous disregard for human life and the autonomy of others, we end up creating multiple terrorists for each one we kill.
> ...people jump to a defeatist attitude and take the position that literally anything we do is a mistake by definition.
This is a straw man argument; no serious person is taking the position that "literally anything we do is a mistake by definition". That said, if you're serious about winning people over, a good place to start might be the folks who were responsible for our "mistakes" giving even the faintest hint that, yes, we acknowledge those things we did were wrong. If we really want to go crazy, we could even (gasp!) commit to not repeating those "mistakes" again. But certain people in this country seem to believe that never admitting to a wrongdoing is the same as never having done wrong at all. Therefore the default posture seems to be "Often wrong, never in doubt". That's a recipe for flushing our reputation on the world stage down the toilet.
EDIT:
Lastly, just because the Marshall Plan was effective in Western Europe, doesn't mean it would be effective in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Please don't make the mistake of thinking all cultures respond to incentives in the same way. That's just wrong.
I'd give you (several) history books and ask you to consider when US or Western political/military action in the middle east has actually improved the lives of people living there.
In case you haven't got the time to read up on history, consider the fact that each of the following states has 'benifited' greatly from western interference in the recent past:
Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran (and lets not forget Palestine!).
More like "Despots in the Desert".
I feel for the Saudi people, but fuck their corrupt, useless monarchy. They could at least aspire to be Singapore, but I guess 100 gold-plated Rolls Royces and stupid giant infrastructure projects strokes the ego more - lame as fuck...
Sic Semper Tyrannis