John,
See below in bold.
Best,
Scott
On 4/19/2019 11:43 PM, John wrote:
Mr. Horton,
I have several questions for you if you’ve got a few minutes to help share your knowledge:
- I’m curious if you can recommend a good introductory book or documentary on Middle Eastern politics, state sponsors of terror, the development of Islamic extremism and its relations to the various schools of Islam, and US involvement in the Middle East (both meddling and professed strategy). I’m a total ignoramus on this issue and I need to do something about it, but I have no idea where to start, and I don’t trust the leftist school system here in NY to give me the strait facts.
Start with the presentation I did for Renegade University on the Terror War. It’s the basis of my next book about _all_ of it. http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/the-war-on-terror-a-global-catastrophe
The first chapter of my book Fool’s Errand has a brief history of Carter-Clinton over there that might help. Otherwise for the most part you have to be more specific. Few books cover everything.
[I guess I really should have recommended Devil’s Game by Robert Dreyfuss, for one.]
- What is wrong with the argument that we should support the Saudi War in Yemen against the Houthis since they are jihadists, evidenced by their motto of “God is great, death to the US, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” How is it not in our best interest to help Saudi Arabia eradicate people who hold those views?
The Shi’ite Houthis have never done anything to us at all. Their enemies, AQAP, blew up the USS Cole, tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, tried to blow up another couple planes with bombs, organized the Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in Europe. USA is fighting on their side against their worst enemies, beginning only weeks after CENTCOM had been working with the Houthis against AQAP. AQ has grown by thousands of men, tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, massive bases and armories worth of weapons, including American artillery and MRAP armored personnel carriers. They fight in the Saudi-UAE mercenary army there with the USA and USN providing cover from the air and sea.
Now tell me again about the Houthis’ chanting.
[And I should have said here: oh, and “eradicate” is the language of genocidal disregard for the lives of individual human beings. It sounds like you’re assuming some pretty distorted premises about what is acceptable behavior and what right anyone has to eradicate anyone else.]
- What is your take, if you have seen it, on this documentary:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80118888
I haven’t seen it.
- Is it true that the Saudi Regime is really quite similar ideologically to the Wahhabi Islamic Extremists?
Well see it’s not similarity that’s the issue. The Saudi kings and princes don’t believe in anything but living it up. But they have a partnership with the Sunni/Wahhabi clerics, who have a monopoly on religious power in the country: You let us keep all the money and fly around with our European whores in our solid gold airplanes, and we’ll let you rule the masses through religion, as long as you tell them that God says to keep letting us do whatever we want.
So it’s like if the atheistic and hedonistic Bill Clinton made a deal with Pat Robertson and the fundamentalist Protestants that they could have all this power over the people as long as they kept the people in line for him.
Does that make sense? So then, yes, this is the exact religion of the AQ terrorists who attack the U.S.. _Part_ of their problem is their rigid religious intolerance, though in most cases it’s religious intolerance of foreign military intervention which motives their actions, which they’d probably oppose just the same if they were Buddhists too. If anything those with religious commitment act first and with the most conviction, but their true motives are still based in the earthly activities of their enemies.
If that is the case, why would they be helping the West fight terrorism, such as their support of ISIS in Syria?
Supporting ISIS ain’t fighting terrorism. It’s the opposite. The question is why did America spend 5 years helping Saudi back AQ and ISIS terrorists in Syria? It’s because the Saudi and Israeli lobbies, and the CIA, State and DoD, all hate Iran and their Shi’ite friends more than they hate the Sunni/Wahhabi/bin Ladenites who knocked our towers down, but are useful in helping to oppose Iran’s friends, Assad and the Houthis.
Should we be their ally, and why?
No. We shouldn’t be anyone’s ally. And Saudi is one of the very last absolute royal monarchies on earth. It is an absolute disgrace that our government has ever supported them in anyway. It has caused terrorism against this country, which has then been used to justify even more war in the name of the reaction. What does America gain for any of it? Nothing. The oil would be for sale anyway.
- Is there a liberal group in the Syrian Civil War?
No. https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/no-fsa-al-qaeda/
- Is it in our best interests to keep Baathists in control in that part of the world so that the people don’t elect jihadist regimes that are even worse for us?
No. Backing dictatorships like in Saudi, Egypt, etc. was part of what got us attacked in the first place. No we should not do anything to “keep” them in power there.
But for the love of God, we should never invade and knock off or otherwise create chaos in any country, and especially not actually back AQ and ISIS terrorists, as Obama did in Syria, against anyone ever, no matter how much the Likud Party hates Hezbollah.
- Is there a liberal faction in Palestine? What’s the difference between Fatah and Hamas?
I don’t think so. Depends what counts as “liberal.” Fatah has more old commie influence. The Mossad helped create Hamas in order to serve as a right-wing religious counter-weight to the Fatah, in order to help to divide and conquer the Palestinian people further. Certainly both Fatah and Hamas are acquiescent to Israeli power, if that’s the question. Arafat recognized Israel back in 1988. Hamas is ready to recognize them in any final deal that allows independence for Palestine.
So, in other words, as far as the Palestinians’ relationship with Israel, liberal or not doesn’t have a thing to do with it. It’s just another Israeli public relations red herring talking point to try to change the subject from their good old fashioned land-rustling from the Palestinian civilian population; read: theft.
- What are the most liberal and repressive Islamic countries in the Middle East? Is it true that Israel is the only country in the Middle East with freedom of religion?
Ha. The Israelis have been lying their asses off to you. Why do you think the Palestinians Christians and Muslims live in Gaza, the West Bank and refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Tunisia and in exile around the world? It’s because they were “cleansed” from their homes and villages and towns in 1948, 750,000 of them — any big cities near you around that size? — a hell of a lot of people. And why? Simply because they were not Jewish. That is the one and only answer. Another few hundred thousand were cleansed in the 1967 war as well. Ever since then Jewish colonists have seized territory from the Palestinians in the West Bank and brought their army with them, creating South African Apartheid like Bantustans, dividing the land up, separating people from their property, families and businesses, making them go through checkpoints like maximum security prisoners in their own land. There are Jewish-only roads, Palestinians are killed, tortured, their children abducted and tortured and “convicted” in military courts in a foreign language and the kind of totalitarianism that would be a call to war against any country outside of the American system who behaved the same way. And every single bit of it on the basis of religion. The people of Gaza — the majority of whom are minors — are imprisoned in that open air concentration camp simple because they are not Jewish.
What they mean is that Israeli Jews may choose to be atheists if they want.
Israel of course was founded by atheist communists who believed that God was a stupid ridiculous fairy tale, and that He gave them all this land, which was why it was okay to take it from the human beings who already lived there.
Good enough for government work, right?
–As far as Muslim countries with freedom of religion: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Bashar al Assad’s Syria. Do those count? I think Malaysia is fairly tolerant. I don’t know about the law regarding, say, conversion, in Iran, but I know that 50,000 Jews live there in peace as their ancestors have for 3,000 years. Sunni Arabs and other minorities are protected too. The worst ones are our good friends the Saudis and the Pakistanis who will kill someone for daring to convert.
This is a familiar Israeli Hasbara talking point: Hey we may be like White Supremacist Jim Crow Mississippi in 1955, and steal from and kill Palestinians every single day, but hey, at least we’re not brown Arab barbarians like the people we’re stealing from and want you to hate, right?!
I’m not impressed.
We can ridicule the Pakistanis for their religious intolerance. That’s its own separate issue. Don’t let Zionists appropriate it. They’re no better.
I appreciate any information you can impart.
Here, read all these real quick:
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-shimon-peres-and-911/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-shabbats-with-zade/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-abused-jews-iraq/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-anti-semitic-law-israel/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-separation-association/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-why-palestine-matters/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-kushner-plan/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-deal-of-the-century/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-dehumanizing/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-a-glimmer-of-hope/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-defining-anti-semitism/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-invidious-conflation/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-palestinian-refugees/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-trumps-delusions-persist/
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-art-of-smear/
