It is apparently Wishful Thinking Day today at The Glittering Eye. My posts today all seem to involve wishful thinking in one way or another. So, for example, the scales have finally fallen from the eyes of the editors of the Washington Post and now they wish that something could be done about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman:
As a military partner in pushing back against Iranian aggression, Saudi Arabia has been worse than useless. It has no significant presence in Syria, where Tehran is making its strongest military push. The intervention in Yemen launched by Mohammed bin Salman produced a humanitarian catastrophe while strengthening Iran’s position. Tehran smiled when the prince rashly launched a blockade against neighboring Qatar, site of the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East; it cheered when he abducted the pro-American prime minister of Lebanon.
Mohammed bin Salman has been good at charming Westerners with talk of religious reform and economic modernization, but in practice he has done enormous damage to those causes. He has imprisoned scores of liberal Saudis who support reform, including the women who pushed for the right to drive. In overseeing the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, he silenced an influential journalist who endorsed his goals while criticizing his methods. He has backed away from several major economic reforms.
which are precisely the things I was complaining about while the editors were blissfully hailing MBS as a reformer, distracted by the bright, shiny object of letting women drive.
I guess my own wishful thinking is that both the editors and the Trump Administration would recognize that the Saudis are not our allies; they are our enemies. They financed Osama Bin Laden; they financed Al Qaeda’s attack against us; the Saudis have continued to support Al Qaeda in Syria.
There is an old proverb that covers our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pretty well: he who sups with the devil should use a long spoon. Ultimately, U. S. and Saudi interests cannot be reconciled. The best we can do is manage them and so far we have refused to do that.
More wishful thinking? That any alternative to MBS would be better than he.
At the moment, the House of Saud is all that thwarts the rise of Wahhabism in the oil rich nation, and we have to make do.
Which does not mean that we must give the members of the Saudi royal family visas, sell them munitions, or support their foreign policy goals.