• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What can we do about Saudi Arabia?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Lubricus

Member
It is Saudi Arabia that is responsible for the current Sunni Muslim terrorism according to this article.

In the 1980s, Saudi money and fighters poured into Afghanistan to help the mujahedeen fight the Soviets, an effort that gave rise to the Taliban and eventually to al Qaeda. In the 1990s, Saudi aid to the Bosnian Muslims struggling in the wars that broke up Yugoslavia brought the Wahhabi strain of Islam to Europe. That same decade, Saudi money helped to further radicalize Chechnya's Muslims. One of the cables released by WikiLeaks quotes then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." Most members of al Qaeda were Saudi, including Osama bin Laden, and 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.

And they are considered allies of western nations. We don't really need their oil anymore.

How did it become so strong?
A turning point came in 1979, when radical clerics who believed the House of Saud had been contaminated with Western decadence led hundreds of armed militants to occupy the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Deeply alarmed, the royal family sought to appease the militants by reversing the steps toward modernity the country had taken. Movie theaters and record stores were shut down, and more power was given to the religious police to seek out and punish offenses. "In effect," says former diplomat John Burgess, "the seizure of the Grand Mosque sent Saudi Arabia into a 30-year time warp that cut it off from the social-development trajectory it had been on." The royal family made a grand bargain with the clerics: Riyadh would fund the spread of Wahhabism abroad as long as the extremists kept any militant activities off Saudi soil. That deal ensured that radical Islam would overwhelm moderate versions in many countries, and planted the seeds of many terrorist groups.

And it will continue.

During the decade-long Afghan struggle against the Soviets, Saudi princes funded the explosive growth of madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The schools, located in rural communities where there was no other source of education, taught a militant form of Islam, telling students they had a sacred duty to fight infidels. Out of these schools came the radical students who eventually formed the Taliban, as well as many al Qaeda recruits. Today, many of these Pakistani schools draw students from Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere, and they return home radicalized. "The ideology that's propagated by these schools is so significant in shaping minds in the Muslim world," says political scientist Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "If regular schooling is not schooling people, and schools that propagate fanaticism are schooling people, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what would be the impact."

Along with Boku Harem, Saudi Arabia gave rise to ISIS (after the USA made huge mistakes in Iraq).

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sees itself as purer than the Saudi regime, but its fundamentalist Sunni doctrine has its roots in Wahhabism. Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida who has called for declassification of the portion of the 9/11 Commission report dealing with Saudi Arabian links to the hijackers, says ISIS "is a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money, and Saudi organizational support." In effect, Graham says, ISIS represents a form of Wahhabi ideology that the Saudis can't control — a cancer that now threatens the kingdom. "Who serves as fuel for ISIS? Our own youth," said Saudi dissident writer Turki Al-Hamad this year. "In order to stop ISIS, you must first dry up this ideology at the source."

http://theweek.com/articles/570297/how-saudi-arabia-exports-radical-islam

So how do we stop Saudi Arabia from continuing to export this madness?
Isolate them? Try harder to promote the moderates in Saudi? Go to war and overthrow their current governement?
It does not seem like we will be safe until Saudi Arabia has changed.
Ironically Iran now seems it may be a better ally in the future.
 

Sinfamy

Member
As citizens, not a whole lot.
As a country, place tough economic sanctions, freeze some of those royal assests, and negotiate a plan for them to take a strong active role in the current situation, making sure no funding goes to extremists.
As for religious influences, no clue.
But it won't happen.
 
First thing first, the American citizens need to be educated on the matter. Second, Saudi Arabia government needs to become secular.
 

blahness

Member
So how do we stop Saudi Arabia from continuing to export this madness?
Isolate them? Try harder to promote the moderates in Saudi? Go to war and overthrow their current governement?
It does not seem like we will be safe until Saudi Arabia has changed.
Ironically Iran now seems it may be a better ally in the future.

We have helped them do this to all of the recently overthrown countries in that region, why would they allow us to do it to them?

The US gov could first stop selling them weapons or stop supporting their campaign to bomb the hell out of Yemen.
 

Christopher

Member
Separation of religion and state - that Sharia law garbage is poison and anyone who says to be culturally respectable of it is a huge part of the problem.
 

StuKen

Member
Saudi is a geopolitical minefield. No single nation can deal with them and the moment any large power disengages with them another will jump in and reap the rewards of limitless cheap oil.

Your not needing them assertion is categorically wrong. Look what they did to the Russians and the fracking and shale oil markets in the us when they flooded the oil markets earlier this year.

Until they run out of oil they can do what they want with impunity and the rest of the world can do fuck all about them.
 
Any change in Saudi Arabia is going to have to be gradual. Like, at a snail's pace.

As much as everyone wants the Saudi government to cease their horrible human rights abuses and become a more secular and democratic society, we can't do anything that would massively destabilize Saudi Arabia. It's just too dangerous, especially considering the presence of Mecca and Medina within their borders.
 

Lubricus

Member
Saudi is a geopolitical minefield. No single nation can deal with them and the moment any large power disengages with them another will jump in and reap the rewards of limitless cheap oil.

Your not needing them assertion is categorically wrong. Look what they did to the Russians and the fracking and shale oil markets in the us when they flooded the oil markets earlier this year.

Until they run out of oil they can do what they want with impunity and the rest of the world can do fuck all about them.

How about if the USA and Russia make a deal to pump more oil and deplete the Saudi's cash reserves?
The trouble is it would hurt a lot of other countries if we got into a "pumping" duel with Saudi Arabia.
We would have to get China on our side as well and sell our oil to them so they do not buy from the Saudi's.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/investing/saudi-arabia-oil-cash-crunch/
 

Mimosa97

Member
We can start by economic sanctions and fight their wahabi ideology relentlessly. We need to help the muslim countries who practice an Islam very different from wahabism (north african countries, sub-saharan muslim countries, indonesia etc..) but are threatened by the rise of salafism/takfiri jihadism and the huge influence saudi arabian money has on them.

But the only way to really get rid of wahabism is for a muslim coalition to take Mecca back from the hands of the Sauds. Until then, they'll keep spreading their poison.
 

Christopher

Member

Nikodemos

Member
Saudi Arabia's rulers really fucked everybody's shit up after the Great Siege of Mecca.

Instead of obliterating all extremist clerics, that limp donkey's cock Khalid decided, on the contrary, to make the garbage they were spouting into law.
 

Zaptruder

Banned
Get off oil.

Pretty much this.

The faster we get off oil, the less power Saudi Arabia has.

Of course they're not idiots over there - they know the world is moving in that direction too, so they're also spending to get off oil.

But they still require sufficient time and capital to transition - which is put into jeopardy if the world moves off oil faster than they expect.
 
Stop their funding and 'building" of mosques in other countries
wait for a slew of "politically correct" posters claiming xenophobia when there has been Salafist Wahhabi Mosques opening up in the West backed by Saudi ideologues with big money who spread their extremist views abroad.

France will be closing specific mosques that have direct ties with Salfists from Saudi Arabia.

it is highly problamatic when an extremist wing of a religion mixes itself with mysognist, homophobic political ideology such as the Salfists, who's idelogy is not comptible with the West

Salafi Wahabism is one of the worst plagues that has worsened in the last decades.
 

StuKen

Member
If you take away from their oil revenue and freeze some of those overseas accounts held by the princes, it would impede their ability to do more damage.

And then they stop buying arms and go with your regional rival and cut your oil supply.

Everyone benefits handsomely financially from the status quo and the deaths of a few people in the region and sporadic terrorist attacks in the west are a price EVERY western nation is willing to pay for energy security and a self perpetuating war economy to drive massive arms deals.

It won't be dealt with because all global power brokers benefit from it in a myriad of different ways.
 

Liha

Banned
We'll have to wait and see, the low oil price will destabilize the country in the next 10-20 years. The oil price will fall further when the Iran sanctions will be lifted.

According to a recent report from the IMF, Saudi Arabia’s public debt is estimated to rise from below 2 percent of its GDP in 2014 up to 33 percent by the end of 2020. The report also shows that in the past three years, Saudi Arabia’s budget surplus was turned into a deficit reaching 21.6 percent of GDP in 2015.
http://globalriskinsights.com/2015/10/saudi-arabias-deficit-problem/
 

Moronwind

Banned
Wait for the oil economy to run it's course. Until then, just don't let them construct Mosques or Madrassas in your country.
Their diplomatic spat with Sweden last year shows the futility of trying to pressure them into changing their ways.
 
Stop being dependant on fossil fuels. Western governments should make it a top priority to stimulate and subsidize R&D in renewable energy, recycling and alternative fuels. This will also create new jobs/industries.
There's a sense of fear amongst western politicians in power when it comes to SA. Nobody dares to confront and possibly upset SA. I can only guess this has to do with our oil addiction.
 

StuKen

Member
We'll have to wait and see, the low oil price will destabilize the country in the next 10-20 years.


http://globalriskinsights.com/2015/10/saudi-arabias-deficit-problem/

They made the conscious decision to liquidate some of the reserves. They only need a couple of years of depressed prices to pretty cripple the nascent shale industry in the us and Russian production. It will take far longer for them to ramp up production when they turn off the tap again.

Cheap oil prices are not here to stay. They are a geopolitical weapon, another in the arsenal they use in their violently dysfunctional relationship with the rest of the world.
 

sbkodama

Member
You think only saudi arabia use terrorism ?

In france a region has voted, with the majority of the "socialist party" which is in power, for an help of 600 000E to build an infrastructure to teach the handling of canadian tank by saudi arabia for six month a year for 4 years, this is the kind of things we do about saudi arabia.
 

Lubricus

Member
They made the conscious decision to liquidate some of the reserves. They only need a couple of years of depressed prices to pretty cripple the nascent shale industry in the us and Russian production. It will take far longer for them to ramp up production when they turn off the tap again.

Cheap oil prices are not here to stay. They are a geopolitical weapon, another in the arsenal they use in their violently dysfunctional relationship with the rest of the world.

So what do we do? Why not just cancel all their oil contracts with North America (Canada and Mexico would probably support it), EU (Russia would love more customers), Japan, and China(Nigeria, Venezuela, etc would like more business as well).
 
Covertly support an Iranian invasion of Saudi Arabia.


Leak documents that prove a link between the Saudi royal family and 9/11 as casus belli.


Send in covert teams to destroy Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
You think only saudi arabia use terrorism ?

No, but a disproportionate amount of terrorist individuals and funding come from SA.

They aren't the only ones, but they are certainly the best at it.
 
Fighting against them will only make their support stronger. Their solution needs to come internally over time. We could be less "friendly" with them.. But that's about it, We can't force our beliefs on others

There's an election happening today where women can vote for the first time right? Insane that it's taken till now... But I guess that's sort of .. Something
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
Accept the ideological root causes instead of censor ourselves and, in collaboration with and/or under leadership of Muslim organizations, design counter-narratives and counter-propaganda directed at potential targets of radicalization.
 
Did OP just ask if America should go to war with Saudi Arabia? That's an awesome mentality and exactly why the world loves you.
 

LordDash

Banned
The liberal crowd is growing in Saudi Arabia, they even have a few Royal princes backing them up. Social media has opened a lot for Saudis in discovering and learning about the world. There will be change, although at a slow pace.
 

Oppo

Member
The liberal crowd is growing in Saudi Arabia, they even have a few Royal princes backing them up. Social media has opened a lot for Saudis in discovering and learning about the world. There will be change, although at a slow pace.

I disagree. I think it will be rapid, at least relative to previous cultural shifts. I think it's happening now.

Ganzlinger said:
I'd like to read more from Saudi Arabian users regarding this situation
they risk persecution.
 

Sulik2

Member
You can't touch SA while the world is so dependent on oil unless you plan to conquer, occupy and keep the oil flowing. Since that would be a nightmare, getting off oil so SA can actually be sanctioned or attacked would make a big difference.
 
Along with Boku Harem, Saudi Arabia gave rise to ISIS (after the USA made huge mistakes in Iraq).

Sorry I don't understand this point...

Are you suggesting that Saudi gave rise to "Boko Haram" as well as ISIS? or that Boko Haram also gave rise to ISIS?

Because legitimately, Boko Haram has very little to do with ISIS, outside of being somewhat inspired by news of some of their exploits.

Boko Haram is a northern Nigerian sectarian guerrilla army of illiterate (wilfully so, just look at the meaning of the name) fools, who claim to be religiously motivated when in reality they're wholly catalysed (funded and armed) through political motivations, and ill-sentiments towards the ruling party at the time.
 

spekkeh

Banned
Stop their funding and 'building" of mosques in other countries
This would probably be the main immediate thing. But stopping foreign groups from funding religious institutions would be the death knell for Catholic churches everywhere. (and Mormonism, but I'm not sure how many outside of America would be sad about that.)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom