{"id":49421,"date":"2019-11-05T07:46:27","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T12:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49421"},"modified":"2019-11-05T07:46:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T12:46:34","slug":"saudi-bases-and-the-bin-ladens-a-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49421","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Bases and the Bin Ladens: A Love Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saudi Bases and the Bin Ladens: A\u00a0Love\u00a0Story<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What is Trump really<\/em> up to? It\u2019s almost unknowable. At the same time that the president was pulling (some) troops out of Northeast Syria, giving an antiwar speech<\/a>, and then sending other troops back into Syria to “secure the oil,” he also quietly sent another<\/a> 1800 service members into Saudi Arabia. What little Trump did say about it consisted of a peculiar defense of his actions. Faced with the obvious question from a reporter: “Mr. President, why are you sending more troops to Saudi Arabia when you just said it\u2019s a mistake to be in the Middle East?” Trump argued that there was no contradiction in his policy because, well, the Saudis “buy hundreds of billions of dollars\u2019 worth of merchandise from us,” and have “agreed to pay us for everything we\u2019re doing to help them.” It seems the U.S. military is going full mercenary in the Gulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I\u2019ve noted<\/a> that Trump\u2019s recent antiwar remarks were profound \u2013 though largely unfulfilled \u2013 these words will amount to nothing if followed by a military buildup in Saudi Arabia that leads to a new, far more bloody and destabilizing, war with Iran. Nothing would please the “three Bs” \u2013 Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton \u2013 more than a US military strike on the Islamic Republic, cost and consequences be damned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s just that an Iran war isn\u2019t the only risk associated with basing majority-Christian, foreign American troops in the land of Islam\u2019s two holiest cities. And a brief\u00a0historical review<\/a>\u00a0of US presence in Saudi Arabia demonstrates quite clearly the potential transnational terrorist “blowback” of Washington\u2019s basing decisions. In fact, Trump\u2019s latest deployment constitutes at least the third time the US military has been stationed on the Arabian peninsula. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Bases and the Bin Ladens: A\u00a0Love\u00a0Story What is Trump really up to? It\u2019s almost unknowable. At the same time that the president was pulling (some) troops out of Northeast Syria, giving an antiwar speech, and then sending other troops back into Syria to “secure the oil,” he also quietly sent another 1800 service members into Saudi Arabia. What little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6400,11272,19532,588,701,844],"class_list":["post-49421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-antiwar-com","tag-bin-laden","tag-maj-danny-sjursen","tag-oil","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49422,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49421\/revisions\/49422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}