Truthdig
Bernie Sanders' Policy Backing Saudi Intervention Needs to Change Now
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sanders_policy_backing_saudi_interventio
n_needs_to_change_now_20150827/
Posted on Aug 27, 2015
By Sam Husseini
Saudi Arabia's newly enthroned King Salman, center, receives pledges of
loyalty following the death of King Abdullah in January. (SPA / AP)
This piece first appeared at Sam Husseini's
blog(http://husseini.posthaven.com/small-servings-lousy-food-sanders-foreign
-policy-backing-saudi-intervention) .
There's an old joke about two elderly men at a Catskill resort. One
complains: "The food here is horrible." The other vigorously agrees: "Yeah,
I know-and the portions are so damn small!"
Several writers have noted Bernie Sanders' scant comments about foreign
policy-small portions.
But another problem is the little that he has articulated in terms of
foreign policy-the foreign policy issue that he's been most passionate about
really-is extremely regressive and incredibly dangerous. That issue is the
role of Saudi Arabia. Sanders has actually pushed for the repressive regime
to engage in more intervention in the Mideast.
In discussing ISIS, Sanders invariably has talked about Saudi Arabia as the
solution rather than a large part of the problem. It's couched in language
that seems somewhat critical, but the upshot is we need more Saudi influence
and intervention in the region. In effect, more and bigger proxy wars, which
have already taken the lives of hundreds of thousands in Syria and could
even further rip apart Iraq, Libya and other countries.
He's said this repeatedly-and prominently. In
February(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/02/11/bernie_sanders_th
is_war_is_a_battle_for_the_soul_of_islam_and_it_should_be_muslim_countries_s
ending_troops.html) with Wolf Blitzer on CNN: "This war is a battle for the
soul of Islam and it's going to have to be the Muslim countries who are
stepping up. These are billionaire families all over that region. They've
got to get their hands dirty. They've got to get their troops on the ground.
They've got to win that war with our support. We cannot be leading the
effort."
What? Why should a U.S. progressive be calling for more intervention by the
Saudi monarchy? Really, we want Saudi troops in Syria and Iraq and Libya and
who knows where else? You'd think that perhaps someone like Sanders would
say that we have to break our decades-long backing of the corrupt Saudi
regime-but no, he wants to dramatically accelerate it.
Even worse, after the Saudis started bombing Yemen with U.S. government
backing earlier this year, killing
thousands(http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/killed-saudi-bombing) and leading
to what the UN is now calling a "humanitarian
catastrophe,"(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34011187) and
suffering that is "almost
incomprehensible(http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/08/u-n-official-says-human-suff
ering-in-yemen-almost-incomprehensible/) ," Sanders continued. In another
interview, again with Wolf Blitzer in
May(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/05/20/cnn_will_only_talk_abo
ut_hillary_clinton_with_bernie_sanders.html#ooid=piZXk2dTo73VInz5DDhOEuknlzD
Wk8cV) , Sanders did correctly note that as a result of the Iraq invasion,
"we've destabilized the region, we've given rise to Al-Qaeda, ISIS." But
then he actually called for more intervention: "What we need now, and this
is not easy stuff, I think the President is trying, you need to bring
together an international coalition, Wolf, led by the Muslim countries
themselves! Saudi Arabia is the third largest military budget in the world,
they're going to have to get their hands dirty in this fight. We should be
supporting, but at the end of the day this is [a] fight over what Islam is
about, the soul of Islam, we should support those countries taking on ISIS."
Progressives in the U.S. are supposed to look toward the Saudi monarchy to
save the soul of Islam? The Saudis have pushed the teachings of the Wahhabi
sect and have been deforming Islam for decades. This actually helped give
rise to ISIS and Al
Qaeda(http://www.academia.edu/10254526/How_Saudi_Wahhabism_Is_the_Fountainhe
ad_of_Islamist_Terrorism_Lack_of_human_rights_makes_the_House_of_Saud_a_more
_diplomatic_version_of_ISIS._Yousff_Butt) . It's a little like Bernie
Sanders saying that the Koch Brothers need to get more involved in U.S.
politics, they need to "get their hands dirty."
But if your point is to build up the next stage of the U.S. government's
horrific role in the Mideast, it kind of makes sense. The U.S. government
helped ensure the Saudis would dominate the Arabian Peninsula from the
formation of the nation state of Saudi
Arabia(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sqPDdk5XCg) -a nation named after a
family. In return, the Saudis had the U.S. take the lead in extracting oil
there and favored investing funds from their oil wealth largely in the West
over building up the region, what the activist scholar Eqbal Ahmed called
separating the material wealth of the Mideast from the mass of the people of
the region(http://durianapocalypse.net/blog/materials/gulfcrisis.html) .
Saudi Arabia buys U.S. weapons to further solidify the "relationship" and to
ensure its military dominance.
The Saudis and other Gulf monarchies deformed the Arab
uprisings(http://husseini.posthaven.com/saudi-myths) , which transformed
oppressive but basically secular and minimally populist regimes into failed
states, giving rise to groups like ISIS and allowing Saudi Arabia to largely
call the shots in the region. What has happened in the Mideast since the
ouster of Mubarak and the so-called Arab uprisings is that the Saudis have
been strengthened. Both the Tunisian and Yemeni dictators fled to Saudi
Arabia. Mubarak himself was urged not to resign by the Saudis, and the
Saudis are now the main backers of the military regime in Cairo.
Why is Sanders doing this? Is there a domestic constituency called
"Americans for Saudi Domination of the Arab World"? Well, yes and no. It
would obviously play well in the general public to say: "We've got to stop
backing dictatorships like the Saudis. They behead people, they are
tyrannical. They have a system of male guardianship. Why the hell are they
an ally?"
But Sanders is unwilling to break with the U.S.-Saudi alliance that has done
such damage to both the Arab people and the American people. Now, we have a
full-fledged Israeli-Saudi
alliance(https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/15/did-money-seal-israeli-saudi-
alliance/) and it must be music to the ears of pro-Israeli journalists like
Wolf Blitzer for Sanders to be calling for U.S. backing of further Saudi
domination.
Some have argued that Sanders' candidacy is very valuable-that win or lose,
he's putting the issue of income inequality front and center. But if the
candidacy is to be lauded for raising issues of economic inequality, educate
the public and galvanize around that that, it's fair to ask how the
candidacy is also deforming public discussion on other crucial issues. If
the position of the most prominent "progressive" on the national stage is
for more Saudi intervention, what does that do to public understanding of
the Mideast and dialogue between people in the U.S. and in Muslim countries?
If the U.S. further subcontracts the Mideast to the Saudi regime, the
setbacks and disappointments for peace and justice in the Mideast during the
Obama years will be small potatoes in comparison. If the Mideast continues
to deform, largely because of U.S. policies backing Saudi Arabia, as well as
Israel, all the other things Sanders is talking about regarding economic
inequality are arguably out the window. He himself has noted that "wars
drain investment at home." Or does Sanders think it's all good if he can set
up a scheme whereby the Saudis pay the bills and use their own troops for
Mideast wars that the U.S. government backs? Martin Luther King in his
"Beyond Vietnam(http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html) " speech
referred to the wars taking funds from the war on poverty as a "demonic
destructive suction tube." But he also referred to just looking at the
funding as a "facile" connection, listing several other, deeper, reasons
based on other moral grounds for opposing war. But Sanders rarely touches on
those other reasons. It's as though we've learned nothing about blowback
since 9/11.
Contrast Sanders' call for an escalation in Saudi Arabia's proxy wars with
what insurgent Jeremy Corbyn-whose campaign to lead the Labor Party in the
UK has caught fire-is saying. He's been challenging the British
establishment about arming the Saudis: "Will the Minister assure me that the
anti-corruption laws will apply to arms deals and to British arms exports?
Will they involve forensic examination of any supposed corruption that has
gone on between arms sales and regimes in other parts of the world rather
than suspending Serious Fraud Office inquiries, as in the case of an
investigation into the Al-Yamamah arms contract with Saudi Arabia?" See a
section on Corbyn's website on Saudi
Arabia(http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/categories/saudi-arabia/) and video of
his remarks at the House of Parliament just last
month(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX4WMMUvHrM) , with Corbyn
relentlessly raising questions of human rights violations by the Saudi
regime.
Instead of adopting Corbyn's human rights perspective, Sanders has used
Saudi Arabia's massive military spending to argue that it should further
dominate the region. Unexamined is how it got that way. Unexamined is the
$60 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that Obama signed
off on in 2010(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-16396777) . The BBC
reports, Saudi "Prince Turki al-Faisal called for 'a unified military force,
a clear chain of command' at a high level regional security conference in
Riyadh, the Saudi capital."
So Sanders and Saudi planners seem to be working toward the same ends, as
though war by an autocratic state in a critical region can be expected to
breed good outcomes. Sanders doesn't seem to take money from Lockheed
Martin-though he's backed their F-35, slated to be based in Vermont-but his
stance on Saudi Arabia must bring a smile to the faces of bigwigs there.
The Black Lives Matter movement has moved Sanders to "say the names" of
Sandra Bland and others who are victims of police violence. Those striving
for peace and justice around the world need to do the same regarding Sanders
and U.S. foreign policy.
Sam Husseini is communications director for the Institute for Public
Accuracy and founded VotePact.org. His personal website is:
husseini.posthaven.com He's on twitter: @samhusseini.
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