Where, then, are the battalions of those who should be concerned? The Saudi King warns that IS will be in Europe and America within months. The Saudi King, the closest thing we have to an absolute monarch outside of North Korea these days, has at his convenience an army of 75,000 men, including a 1000-strong tank armada which might even give Vladimir Putin a moment's pause if he found them sitting astride some patch of turf he might like to place within his possession. The Royal Saudi Air Force, deploying from bases somewhat closer to the Islamic State than Williamstown, boasts more than 300 combat aircraft, including F15E Strike Eagles and shiny new Eurofighter Typhoons, barely out of their bubblewrap.
And yet, in spite of King Saud's fit of the vapours about the threat of IS, there is no suggestion that these formidable war machines might do anything like deploy from those conveniently located Saudi air fields. No. His oil slaves will do that work. And many in his Kingdom will go on quietly supporting their Sunni brethren in IS.
So why are we going to another war? Surely not because the last one went so well?
Saturday, September 06, 2014
Why Saudi ridicule deserves to be ramped up
Readers may rightly note that I'm feeling particularly down on Saudi Arabia at the moment, and John Birmingham in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning helps explain why:
Methinks it has something to do with SA's strategic location. We are such hypocrites over these issues, it is well known SA has been beheading people as a matter of course.
ReplyDeletehttp://aattp.org/saudi-arabia-beheads-26-people-in-1-month-some-for-sorcery-us-fox-has-nothing-to-say-about-it/
Beheading as a form of execution is, or course, gruesome; but let's not forget France carried out the last use of the guillotine in only 1977. (Which is later than I would have guessed. I also don't recall reading about it at the time as a matter of international controversy.)
ReplyDeleteSo I don't think we have really all that strong a ground to criticise them for their choice of execution method following conviction for serious and well proven crime.
What we should attack them for, of course, is for having things like witchcraft and sorcery as a potential crime warranting punishment up to and including death.
I think it might be different for many Muslims. I vaguely recall that for a proper burial the whole body, intact, is very important.
ReplyDeleteI take your point though, as a means of execution it is not as horrific as hanging or perhaps even lethal injection given the recent problems there.