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Comment by Konnstann | Hacker News Reader

It's always funny for me to see articles like this, the last one I remember was about women being able to drive. What does Saudi Arabia have that prevents the world from interfering in its politics? Don't say oil, if it was just that the US would have been in there long ago.

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The House of Saud was a group of nomads spreading Wahhabism wishing for an Islamic State who happened to be standing around when American prospectors struck oil. The Americans said “hey brb watch this oil for us thx” and they did and were elevated to the official stewards of the oil and we hooked them up with the nation state.

When non-state Wahhabism is interrupting other American pet projects, we drone them. If it is domestic inside of Saudi Arabia or official actions that dont interrupt American pet projects we ignore them. They cut people’s heads off all day within Saudi Arabia under a semblance of theological due process, it isnt of interest.

There is nothing to interfere with.

The US maintains its relationship for the petrodollar oil derivative and “the world” without US support has no say.

So yes, it is “oil” and is that simple. The US is there and enjoys an extremely fruitful symbiotic relationship for the past 100 years.

Although Saudi Arabia started with private American citizens, the Federal Government tried the same concept in every middle eastern country to get us to how it is today.

Why is that even a good idea at all? First most of these laws are a result of the culture here and if a vote were to happen are likely to remain or at least be controversial. Even the silly driving ban which have no religious basis is/was controversial even amongst women. Enforcing non popular laws from a foreign entity is a good recipe for disaster and may increase resistance to these laws and start wars or other bad stuff. Heck I think most Saudi citizens, even the liberal ones, would not want such actions.

In addition, I think they are also too many countries which doesn’t match US ideals, will US start WW3? For example there are many islamic countries with differing laws but I would guess most don’t match US ideals.

The western world has sad tendency to believe its ideals are the only ideals, so you're unlikely to attract much productive comment. Fanaticism is found everywhere, it's just common for some cultures to give it another name when convenient

Not treating human beings as property is one of those things that doesn't fall on a gray part of the moral spectrum. The history on this is clear and it is universal.

Talk about child beauty pageants is textbook whataboutism.

It's not that simple to equate the two. Modern western ideals are modern western ideals. If living under an authoritarian monarchy were just another way of living, there wouldn't have been a history of revolt against it in the west, because western civilization is no stranger to this kind of society. Western societies have tried autocracy many times. How many times has Saudi Arabia tried liberal democracy?

There's nothing different about your so-called western attitude and Saudis' attitudes towards ideals -- they too think morality isn't a democracy.

Every society has that tendency. "The West" is just the only one in the position of being able to export their ideals.

I agree culture has to shift on its own time - however there will always have to be the brave who are first to peacefully protest, or expose themselves of their beliefs or their nature that they may have had to hid out of fear.

I think most difficult society to counter is that of censorship controls, however even then the population may be quiet and submissive, at the right moment that silence may break in a flash and rebellion occur - and then the control of not knowing who you should fear comes out; the terrifying aspects of this is when you can bring in armed individuals to an area they have no connection to engage in violence - brainwashed to whatever degree, and afraid of repercussions if they don't act as told, that protests or behaviour is seeded by a 3-letter agency by some government painted as an enemy. It's why everyone, especially police and military - those who are at the front lines, need to understand and be taught this manipulation that is possible, especially in heavily controlled societies with system-wide censorship capability; the next Nazi Germany scenario in a modern, high-efficiency scenario, and deployed at scale, isn't necessarily that far off of a possibility. It's why it all needs to come individuals practicing non-violence, and these patterns and mechanics needing to be learned, understood by everyone - or enough of everyone.

The US military has been in Saudi Arabia for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Sultan_Air_Base

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhahran_Air_Base

Having a military base and orchestrating regime changes are a little bit different.

The military base is there to protect the regime. It’s easier to deal with a small monarchy with no transparency than a democracy. And they make for a good enemy of other local countries keeping just enough zest in the region for the weapons to keep flowing and the figureheads to keep toppling, but still allowing for a steady supply of oil.

History of Modern Middle East by William Cleveland is a good resource:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64594.A_History_of_the_M...

A Peace to End All Peace is good too

When people have democracies, they start asking for crazy things that are in their self-interest, such as mineral rights and ownership over their farmland.

You crazy person. Many many landowners in the USA do not own the mineral rights to their land.

Can you fix any dictatorship/weirdo regime in the world? Absolutely not - most of the world is like that. It is the free countries that's the exception. And most of those aren't scary, not threatening others much.

Whatever it is, I may want some for my own country, too.

Well, from which country were the 9/11 terrorists?

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