{"id":181332,"date":"2015-09-15T02:59:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T02:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=181332"},"modified":"2015-09-15T15:40:49","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T15:40:49","slug":"big-lie-u-s-allies-with-saudis-because-were-addicted-to-their-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/big-lie-u-s-allies-with-saudis-because-were-addicted-to-their-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Lie: U.S. Allies with Saudis \u2018Because We\u2019re Addicted to Their Oil\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

In Syria and elsewhere, the U.S. allies with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations that back or even install ISIS and Al Qaeda Islamic jihadists, even while the U.S. wages war against those jihadists. This has puzzled some people, because the U.S. propaganda-line about the matter doesn\u2019t make much sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, the\u00a0\u201cBillionaire Scion Tom Friedman\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0wrote in his\u00a0NYT<\/i> column, on September 2nd<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not an accident that several thousand Saudis have joined the Islamic\u00a0State or that Arab Gulf charities have sent ISIS donations. It is because all\u00a0these Sunni jihadist groups \u2013 ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front \u2013 are the\u00a0ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques\u00a0and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.\u00a0And we, America, have never called them on that \u2013\u00a0<\/i>because we\u2019re addicted to\u00a0their oil<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/i>[emphasis mine].<\/span><\/p>\n

Is America allied with the chief financial backers of Islamic jihad because we need to buy oil from them? Hardly.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not \u201cbecause we\u2019re addicted to their oil.\u201d That reason ended long ago, but the popular belief that we\u2019re allied with hardline Islamic Arab states, Sunni-run nations in the Middle East, because of the oil-issue \u2013 that they have oil, and we need their oil \u2013 continues on as popular lore, long after the reality ended, because it\u2019s constantly being pumped by the U.S. aristocracy\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 media and the journalists they hire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some historical background of America\u2019s evolving relationship with the Saudi royal family is necessary in order to understand in a truthful way, U.S.-Saudi (and broader U.S-Arabic) relations. (On the Saudi side, incidentally, that refers to relations between the U.S. Government and the King of Saudi Arabia, because the King is<\/i> the Government of Saudi Arabia<\/span><\/a>: he\u2019s an absolute dictator there, and he owns not just the Government, but much of the economy. For example, ever since 1980, the Saudi Government, the King, has owned 100% of Aramco, the world\u2019s largest oil company<\/span><\/a>. Aramco\u2019s reserves are more than 250 billion barrels, which at $40\/barrel are, alone, worth $1 trillion, but Forbes<\/i> <\/span>and Bloomberg refuse to calculate the fortunes of royalty and other heads-of-state; so, the fiction is spread, by those business-publishers and others, that the world\u2019s richest person is instead Bill Gates, at a mere $79.2 billion (according to Forbes<\/i>), which is far less than a tenth of King Salman\u2019s fortune. The Saudi King owns the Saudi Government, and the Saudi Government owns Aramco<\/span><\/a> and lots more \u2013 a fortune that\u2019s probably several trillion dollars. The U.S. is allied with the Saudi King. But it\u2019s no longer because of all the oil he has.)<\/span><\/p>\n

At the beginning of the relationship, the U.S.-Saudi alliance was indeed based upon oil. As Thomas W. Lippman headlined at The Link<\/i> in April 2005, about\u00a0\u201cThe Day FDR Met Saudi Arabia\u2019s Ibn Saud\u201d<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

It was February 14, 1945. The end of World\u00a0War\u00a0II was finally in sight as Allied forces\u00a0advanced on\u00a0Berlin and fought their way toward the\u00a0Japanese\u00a0heartland. With victory assured, Roosevelt was looking toward the future and envisioning new\u00a0security\u00a0and economic arrangements for the nation he\u00a0had\u00a0led through twelve tumultuous years.<\/i>\u00a0\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1941, Roosevelt rejected State\u00a0Department advice to provide financial\u00a0assistance to\u00a0Saudi Arabia under the Lend-Lease program\u00a0with\u00a0the comment, “This is a little far afield for us!\u201d\u00a0The\u00a0war changed all that almost overnight.\u00a0Roosevelt’s military and economic advisers, alarmed by the rate at which the war was\u00a0consuming\u00a0U.S. domestic petroleum, began to see the\u00a0potential\u00a0long-term value of the Saudi fields, the only\u00a0ones in\u00a0the Middle East where an American company <\/i>[Chevron, or SOCal, the affiliate which got renamed Aramco<\/span><\/a>]\u00a0held\u00a0exclusive production rights. At the same time the\u00a0U.S. Armed Forces, fighting\u00a0a global war, wanted an\u00a0air base someplace in the Middle East that was\u00a0not\u00a0under British or French control. And Roosevelt, looking past the combat, nursed the hope that\u00a0Abdul\u00a0Aziz <\/i>[King Ibn Saud], who despite his lack of formal education and his country\u2019s backwardness was a hero in the\u00a0Arab\u00a0world, would somehow be helpful in solving a\u00a0daunting problem that the president knew was\u00a0coming: the future of Palestine and the\u00a0resettlement of\u00a0Europe’s surviving Jews. The Nazi death camp\u00a0at\u00a0Auschwitz had been liberated a month before\u00a0the\u00a0president left Washington en route to Yalta,\u00a0and the\u00a0full scope of the Holocaust was being revealed\u00a0to the\u00a0world. The Jews had a claim on the world’s\u00a0conscience, and on Roosevelt’s.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Before 1942, there had been no U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia. But now there was an Embassy in the kingdom. And Chevron:<\/span><\/p>\n

increasingly urged Washington to provide\u00a0assistance lest the\u00a0king revoke the concession and\u00a0give it to the British, who were\u00a0providing him with\u00a0financial assistance. British\u00a0interests had opposed\u00a0American oil companies’ entry into Iran,\u00a0Kuwait,\u00a0Iraq, and Bahrain; the British lost out on Saudi Arabia\u00a0when King Abdul Aziz chose the American firm,\u00a0but the king\u00a0could reverse himself at any time. Busy\u00a0as he was with more\u00a0urgent issues, Roosevelt was\u00a0still flexible and perceptive\u00a0enough to include Saudi\u00a0Arabia in his long-term thinking.\u00a0The\u00a0entreaties of the oil company paid off in February\u00a01943. At the\u00a0urging of Harold Ickes, Secretary\u00a0of the Interior and wartime oil\u00a0administrator, Roosevelt\u00a0declared Saudi Arabia vital to the\u00a0defense of the\u00a0United States and therefore eligible for financial\u00a0aid.\u00a0As the British journalist David Holden wrote in his\u00a0history of\u00a0Saudi Arabia, “The great American takeover\u00a0had begun.”\u00a0Official contacts between the United States and\u00a0Saudi Arabia\u00a0now multiplied quickly, at steadily\u00a0higher levels.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. was allied with the UK, but FDR opposed all empires, including the UK’s, and the USSR’s; and his goal was that control of the post-WWII world would be by a non-imperialistic America, and by no other country, no country which had an empire. He wanted no empires at all, but instead a gradually emerging democratic world government to rule over international relations, for which purpose the U.N. would be formed, as being only a transitional step toward such a democratic global federal government. (Then, in FDR\u2019s vision, not even the U.S. would be in control after that global democracy would be established; the U.S. would instead be the local federal governmental unit, the U.S. Government, over this land, under the global nation, the world government, the global democratic federal republic<\/span><\/a>, encompassing all nations.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The President\u2019s briefing book to <\/span>prepare him for his meeting with the King on 14 February 1945, described the King at length, as a person from an alien culture, including:<\/span><\/p>\n

Any relaxation of his steadfast opposition to Zionist aims in Palestine would\u00a0violate his principles. \u2026 According to Arab and Moslem custom, the women of\u00a0his family are strictly secluded and, of course, should not be mentioned. \u2026 To a\u00a0visitor of ministerial rank, he often makes a facetious offer of an Arab wife, in\u00a0addition to any wife the visitor may already have.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The Link<\/i> <\/span>added an important postscript to Lippman\u2019s article:<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the death of President\u00a0Roosevelt, his successor Harry Truman met\u00a0with the U.S.\u00a0ministers to Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, Saudi Arabia,\u00a0and the\u00a0consul-general to mandated Palestine. Informed\u00a0of his predecessor\u2019s agreement\u00a0with the Saudi king on\u00a0the question of Palestine, Truman reportedly said: \u201cI\u2019m\u00a0sorry,\u00a0gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of\u00a0thousands who are\u00a0anxious for the success of Zionism; I\u00a0do not have hundreds of thousands of\u00a0Arabs among my\u00a0constituents.\u201d The sole source for this candid, and oftcited\u00a0political assessment is Col. William Eddy\u2019s 1954\u00a0book \u201cF.D.R. Meets Ibn Saud,\u201d\u00a0the same book on which\u00a0much of this Link article is based.<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, then, the Cold War began; and the story became even more interesting:<\/span><\/p>\n

While the Cold War was on, there was much posturing by America\u2019s aristocracy saying that they didn\u2019t want to conquer the Soviet bloc, but only to free those nations from communism. Well, communism collapsed on its own, in around 1990 (as an inevitable result from the rot within Marx\u2019s economics, such as his labor theory of value); and the Warsaw Pact ended, but NATO didn\u2019t end. It turns out that America\u2019s aristocracy were set upon conquest, after all \u2013\u00a0conquest ultimately of Russia<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(and maybe of China<\/span><\/a> too, but that\u2019s not yet clear). And so we\u2019ve had\u00a0“Obama\u2019s Secret Deals with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0This isn\u2019t really an oil-and-gas play, such as Tom Friedman pretends; it\u2019s a conquest play, to strangle the Russian economy, by replacing Russia\u2019s oil and gas that\u2019s being pipelined via Ukraine into the EU (the world\u2019s largest energy-market), by instead piping Saudi and Qatari oil-and-gas into the EU, through Syria (which is why they want Assad overthrown<\/span><\/a>). That\u2019s why Saudi King Salman agreed with U.S. Secreatary of State John Kerry in Ryadh on 11 September 2014 to flood the global market with oil \u2013 to strangle Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other BRICS (and pro-BRICS) countries \u2013 and it\u2019s why the Saudi-funded Al Qaeda and Qatari-funded Muslim Brotherhood are being backed to overthrow Russia\u2019s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria. There is no more communism \u2013 it\u2019s just raw greed and power-politics, which have now grown like a cancer to obliterate other priorities of the U.S. Government in international relations. And that\u2019s what\u2019s behind the current refugee-crisis, and so much else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin wants Russia to be accepted as an ally of the United States, but America\u2019s aristocrats (and their agent Obama) refuse.<\/a><\/span> Russia\u2019s strategy under Putin, against Islamic jihadists, has been remarkably successful<\/span><\/a>, while America\u2019s strategy under both Bush and Obama has caused Islamic jihad to blossom (thus producing the current refugee-crisis in Europe), but the United States has consistently spurned Putin\u2019s urgings to American Presidents for Russia to be accepted by America as an ally \u2013 for the Cold War finally to end on America\u2019s side, as it did on Russia\u2019s<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, unlike back in 1945, when FDR and the Saudi King came to their historic agreement, the U.S. is no longer even nearly so dependent upon Saudi oil as before. Moreover, if the U.S. accepted Putin\u2019s offer (like the similar offer from the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev) for Russia to ally with the U.S., then the U.S. could also buy Russia\u2019s oil and gas, thus reducing even further any need for Saudi product. The chief economic competitor of the Arabic oil potentates is Russia, but U.S. Presidents aren\u2019t supposed to be serving those people, who are the main financiers of Islamic jihad<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the entire idea that a nation has to be allied with<\/i> <\/span>a given other nation in order to buy from it \u2013 oil or any other commodity \u2013 is itself ludicrous, except if the two nations are at war with one-another, in which case, the hostilities themselves are causing the problem, not caused by<\/i> <\/span>the problem. The United States Government doesn\u2019t want to trade with Russia. America\u2019s aristocracy instead want to conquer Russia. They want to grab Russia\u2019s oil etc., not to buy it. Similarly, but more successfully, in 1953, they wanted to and did<\/span><\/a> grab Iran\u2019s oil, not buy it \u2013 and that\u2019s the reason why the Iranian people hated Americans when overthrowing in 1979 the U.S.-imposed dictator.<\/span><\/p>\n

The American aristocracy, including its agents such as Tom Friedman, know better than to keep up the ancient excuse that America\u2019s alliance with the Sauds is still \u201cabout oil.\u201d But they pretend otherwise. Communism is dead, and the USSR is gone, but today\u2019s U.S. Government is no longer like FDR\u2019s; it\u2019s no longer representing the U.S. public; it\u2019s no longer democratic; it now represents instead the U.S. aristocracy itself. The idea that the \u201cU.S. Allies with Saudis \u2018Because We\u2019re Addicted to Their Oil\u2019\u201d is just another part of the big lie, that the U.S. is still what it was under FDR \u2013 that it\u2019s still a real democracy, and that it\u2019s still concerned about human welfare, instead of about sheer conquest, and empire.\u00a0This is about stealing oil (and everything), not about buying it. It\u2019s raw psychopathy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse In Syria and elsewhere, the U.S. allies with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations that back or even install ISIS and Al Qaeda Islamic jihadists, even while the U.S. wages war against those jihadists. This has puzzled some people, because the U.S. propaganda-line about the matter doesn\u2019t make much sense. For example, the\u00a0\u201cBillionaire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":181333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,1622],"tags":[115,30,27,32,96,535,524,987,754,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-181332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-featured","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-big-brother","12":"tag-bush","13":"tag-cia","14":"tag-cover-up","15":"tag-global-news","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-russia-today","18":"tag-syria","19":"tag-usa-news","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house","22":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}