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The most egregious human rights violation you could come up with - in loving Saudi Arabia, of all countries - is the execution of an anti-government dissident? I honestly can't even tell what the fuss is about. Is it because they're executing a protester? Egypt's done that by the hundreds. Is it because he was a child when he committed the crime? There are 71 people sitting on death row in the US for crimes they committed as a juvenile. Is it because the manner of execution doesn't pretend to be civilized like the US practice of paralyzing people first so they can't express pain when we inject them with liquid agony? Is it because he alleged that he was tortured, like tens of thousands of other prisoners all over the world? What makes this case notable enough to be examined and objected to separately from the countless other instances of these things all over the world? I mean, other than "because it was done by Islamists instead of against Islamists"?
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Sep 28, 2015 15:26
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Tezzor posted:Egypt's coup government which carried out the executions you refer to is also a US ally Sure, what's your point? Based on the title and very limited OP of this thread, I expected you to be criticizing Saudi Arabia's human rights record, not halfassedly calling out the US for supporting Bad People. Nckdictator posted:Not since 2005. Far too late but atleast that's stopped. The stoppage wasn't retroactive, though. Everyone who was sentenced to death for a juvenile crime before 2005 remained on death row after that decision, and will continue to remain there until they are executed or exonerated. There's 71 left.
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Sep 28, 2015 19:10
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icantfindaname posted:yeah but it's worse because it's the ME and the undermining of liberal democracy has turned the entire region into a hellscape warzone. like africa is already a shithole, it doesn't matter if the US supports a lovely dictator there. this is literally the reason why the ME is hosed up I wouldn't say it's specifically the undermining of democracy so much as general Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. The message the 20th century sent to the Middle East is that it doesn't matter whether the country is ruled by a long, a dictatorship, or a democracy - the only way the government will survive to the end of the year is if it is either intensely pro-Western or is able to suppress political opposition so thoroughly that the CIA can't find a rebel group or disloyal general to sponsor. Not just the Middle East, either. I'm not as familiar with African history, but in the early 20th century practically the entire continent was under Western influence or control. There's no way that isn't a major factor in Africa's issues, the same way it was in the Middle East.
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Sep 28, 2015 20:04
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icantfindaname posted:okay, amend my post to 'liberal democracies not based on apartheid and ethnic cleansing'  This is why I try to avoid sweeping, hyperbolic statements.Smudgie Buggler posted:West bad, brutal traditionalism good, got it. The brutal traditionalists were typically the only ones who could kill enough people to avoid being overthrown after they revoked or nationalized Western monopolies on the country's oil and then suddenly a bunch of pro-Western disloyal generals and revolutionary groups mysteriously appeared out of nowhere with big piles of money, large stocks of "black market" American weaponry, and suspiciously good intelligence about the country's military and movements. In fact, a slightly older version of such schemes was a major factor in the formation of Saudi Arabia, as well as their relative stability to this day and their reliable support by the West. The House of Saud's ambitions were supported by British military and diplomatic aid as a way to destabilize the Ottoman Empire, and the newly-formed state (whose independence was first declared by a British treaty) fought a civil war over Ibn Saud's insistence that raiding and military expansion was not to be done in any British or British-affiliated territory. In addition, unlike their neighbors, they willingly granted large stakes in their oil reserves to Western companies, getting themselves a better deal than their neighbors who were made to grant similar oil concessions by force, and they never threatened American or British property interests in the area. Our alliance with Saudi Arabia isn't just because of oil - it's a recognition of and reward for a century of enthusiastic Saudi support for and protection of Western economic, military, and political interests, typically driven by the recognition that Anglo powers have been the true kingmakers - and kingslayers - in the Middle East for over a hundred years. What's a little thing like "human rights" compared to a century of loyalty to Western interests?
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Sep 29, 2015 20:13
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Fojar38 posted:I get the odd feeling that the situation is more complex than "western puppetmasters rewarding lapdogs" Situations are always more complex than a four-sentence strawman. However, it's certainly true that, throughout the 20th century, Middle Eastern countries that defied Western interests suddenly faced rebellion, coups, or invasion, while Saudi Arabia brutally suppressed anyone who might dare to go against the West and enjoyed incredible stability by Middle Eastern standards. I don't want to diminish the House of Saud's agency in their conquests since it's not like Saudi Arabia sprung up fully-formed out of thin air at British decree, but British support was almost definitely a factor in the Third Saudi State succeeding where the previous two had failed, all those conquests would have vanished in the blink of an eye if Ibn Saud hadn't shut down his extremists by force as soon as they threatened British interests, and the example of the entire rest of the Middle East suggests that Saudi Arabia dodged quite the bullet by willingly giving Western countries a wildly unfair stake in Saudi oil. Saudi Arabia was never a Western puppet, but it was almost alone in avoiding significant Western meddling in its affairs, and subservience to Western interests to the point where outside intervention was never necessary to secure them was almost certainly a primary factor in that. And since such submissive interactions with the West were rarely popular with the local population, dictatorship was necessary to maintain that sort of stability, since democracies were rarely big fans of sacrificing the people's economic or territorial ambitions for the sake of "don't gently caress with the UK/US". Bro Dad posted:Really? I can't think of any. Iran and Syria, off the top of my head? Iran was briefly a constitutional monarchy, but was returned to an absolute dictatorship by a CIA-engineered coup after the parliament voted to nationalize the country's oil reserves (which were mostly owned by the British, who called in a favor from the US). Syria was democratic for a few years, but after the government voted against an oil pipeline, the CIA sponsored a military coup and installed a dictator, who immediately approved the pipeline. Bro Dad posted:I agree, I just can't stand this notion that the fractious and despotic nature of the region is the result of outside actors rather than the combination of the toxic mixing of religious and state politics, geography, and scarce resources. Also I'm a bit cynical on the idea that any real democracy can take shape there (though at least some places like Jordan have recently attempted reforms). There's nothing about Middle Eastern geography or resource availability that somehow magically leads to despotism, and with the notable exception of Saudi Arabia, mixing of religious and state politics didn't really become A Thing in the Middle East until the 70s or so. Most of the early-to-mid 20th century Arab states were largely secular, envisioning themselves as Arabic states (as the culmination of the Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism that had been developing for the past half-century) rather than Islamic states, and there were even a couple of brief attempts at uniting into larger pan-Arab states. The religious nationalism that led to things like the Iranian revolution largely arose as a response to the failure of secularism to provide stability and prosperity in the Middle East, the inability of political repression to squash religious political dissent the way that it had annihilated secular dissent, as well as a (fairly justified) perception that Western meddling was playing a key part in keeping the Middle East weak and miserable.
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Sep 30, 2015 16:30
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BarbarianElephant posted:His regime was very Western friendly, at least as much as Saudi Arabia is. For most of his reign, yes. However, overconfidence caused by growing oil wealth and Nixon's overreliance on Iran led to some important breaks between Iran and the West, most notably the Shah taking advantage of the 1973 oil embargo to jack up oil prices and openly rub it in America's face. Nixon let the Shah get away with anything he wanted, but although American aid to Iran continued after Watergate, the Shah failed to recognize that Nixon's "blank check" policy was no longer in effect and continued to think he was important enough to do as he pleased as long as he stayed anti-Soviet. Having squandered US aid and goodwill and failed to fully appreciate the significant political shifts in the US over the course of the 70s, his popularity was waning among US policymakers. The fact that he had Kissinger and Rumsfeld pushing for him to be a critical pillar of US Middle East policy, as well as the heavy inertia that tends to develop in US military aid, mostly masked his declining standing in the halls of Washington, and he was largely caught by surprise when the Carter administration showed little interest in the kind of intervention that would have been needed to end the Revolution - especially since the US initially drastically underestimated the magnitude of the Revolution and did not think it was a real threat to the Shah until it was arguably too late to salvage his regime. In summary, the Shah was very friendly to the West for most of his reign, but miscalculations and political misreadings meant that while he remained on good terms with a few specific political figures, he failed to maintain friendship with the US government as a whole.
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Sep 30, 2015 21:34
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