Tom Toles for April 24, 2016

Zing

It’s a valid point. It will be interesting to see what kinds of contortions both sides go through if and when a female US President has to deal with one of these rigid patriarchal regimes. But they’ll get through it. They dealt with Madeline Albright, Condoleeza Rice, and HRC as Secretary of State.

@liver, also Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir and now Angela Merkel.

We still need to unredact those 28 pages. Most were Saudi, so how did they get here, and who helped them? Other than the bungling, too many cooks “security” apparatus that missed/ignored all the signals!

I recently met and had a long conversation with a young Saudi woman whose father made the mistake of sending her to the US for an education. She now is completely Americanized and married to a young man she met there whose parents were (gasp) Jewish! They are atheists and just two people in love without the false separation of religion, so it’s a nice thing. Her parents don’t know about it and she can’t ever go back to Riyadh where her father could imprison her, even though she’s an adult. Perhaps the best way to rid the world of the insanity of Islam is to encourage immigration here. After a generation the children will see how absurd it all is and tell the people back there in the 7th century. I don’t know if that’s the solution, but what she told me about life in Saudi Arabia was horrible.

We invaded the wrong country, but what can you expect from Junior.

Excellent idea.

Aren’t the Saudis used to kissing American presidents?

I’m sure Mr Saudi would prefer JEB to be president.

^. yeah makes total logical sense.

Finding out the Saudis were the main players in the 9-11 tower incident seems like a good reason to have Nothing to do with them.

There seems to be so much confusion and misinformation regarding the USA/Saudi Arabia relationship. I, as an American citizen, lived in Saudi Arabia for almost 10 years, so let me shed a little light on the subject.

The oil company there, Aramco (short for Arabian American Company), was formed when a consortium of US oil companies made a deal with the Saudi government to look for oil and, if it was found, to extract and refine it. At the outset, most of the company belonged to the consortium. They had the knowledge and expertise needed and the Saudis. as it turned out, had the oil. Over time, ownership shifted so that the Saudis now own almost all of it. Part of the deal was that the Saudi government would identify its brightest and most promising young men, and pay to educate them in US colleges so that they could return home and begin running the company. That mission has been accomplished, and Aramco is Saudi-run today. But the consortium still reaps some of the profits, so buying Saudi oil is not simply an Us vs. Them proposition.

Many Saudis became wealthy as a result of this deal. Like wealthy people everywhere, they want their children to have the best of everything, so many send their kids to the USA for education, including the girls. In the old days, before King Feisal in the 1960’s, girls were not permitted to go to school at all. Feisal allowed, but did not require it. Baby steps.