Why aren’t we looking into the Saudi role in San Bernardino attack?

Neil MacDonald, on Saudi Arabia and the uncomfortable parallel with ISIS:

Usually, executions — more than 150 so far this year — are performed with a “godly” sword. In public, of course, for the entertainment of a self-righteous crowd. But there are also crucifixions and mutilations.

Saudi woman Fawzia al-Harbi, a candidate for local municipal council elections, sits next to one of her chaperones at a shopping mall in Riyadh last month. Saudi Arabian women are running for election and voting for the first time on Dec. 12, but their enfranchisement marks only a pigeon step towards democracy and gender equality in the Islamic kingdom. (Reuters)

Saudi women are treated better than immigrants, but are still severely oppressed, and treated like chattels of the male population.

If that all sounds like the modus operandi of ISIS, which the Saudis have been accused of having funded and armed before becoming a stout ally in the U.S. bombing campaign, well, the shoe does fit.

The Saudis have actually threatened to sue anyone who makes the ISIS comparison, but objectively, it’s not unreasonable.

The main difference is that the Saudis are extremists who managed to create a nation and have it recognized. And of course their king doesn’t claim to lead a new caliphate.

It’s almost a cliché to say this is all about oil, and the Saudi willingness to sell it, and sell it cheaply in unlimited quantities, to the West.

Because it is about oil. It’s also about the Saudis’ willingness to spend billions of that petro-revenue back in the West, signing contracts for military materiel that our governments are ecstatic to arrange.

If you’re inclined to think otherwise, try this mental exercise: imagine if Cuba, or Russia, or Venezuela (or even Canada) had produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, and had remained a consistent leader in exporting murderous ideology, and radicals like Tashfeen Malik.