The only U.S. president to make
Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit…
Trump signed
a mega-deal with Saudi Arabia:
Running parallel to Trump's summit
with Saudi King Salman on Saturday is a business forum that will include senior
executives from about 45 U.S. companies. Defense contractors Lockheed Martin
(LMT) and Raytheon (RTN) are due to attend. Also on the list: Boeing (BA),
ExxonMobil (XOM), Dow Chemical (DOW), GE (GEK), Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley
(MS), oil services firms and investment groups.
Lockheed Martin President Marillyn
Hewson praised the deal. "At
Lockheed Martin, we are proud to be part of this historic announcement that
will strengthen the relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia," Hewson said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia's state oil giant
Saudi Aramco signed $50 billion of deals with 11 U.S. oil companies, including
Haliburton, Jacob's, Schlumberger, Emerson, Honeywell and McDermott
International.
And to disabuse you of the notion that this is about jobs in
the USA:
In the deal, Saudi Arabia agrees to
buy military equipment from the United States and to hire American companies to
build them in Saudi Arabia…
Enough of the enemies; let’s turn to the warmer side of the
visit. The family:
Trump's son-in-law and senior
adviser Jared Kushner called the president of Lockheed Martin, a major supplier
of U.S. military equipment, for a lower price for the radar system as part of
the deal…
Spirits were high, with Kushner
greeting national security adviser H.R. McMaster with a high-five…
And what is a presidential visit without a little humor
thrown in?
On Sunday, Melania Trump will make
some cultural visits, while Ivanka Trump plans to hold a roundtable session on
“women’s economic empowerment.”
In Saudi Arabia! Get
the joke?
You are known by the company you keep:
During a ceremony, Salman placed
the King Abdulaziz al Saud Collar -- Saudi Arabia's highest civilian honor --
around Trump's neck. The gold medallion
previously had been bestowed on Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime
Minister Theresa May and Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.
They say every president soon has you longing for the return
of the last
president:
What emerged as a veritable love
fest between the two governments was a marked contrast to years of growing
estrangement under President Barack Obama.
Obama, who sold about $115 billion
in U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia during his eight years as president, had slowed
military cooperation with the kingdom in large part because of what it
considered Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Yemen.
Ahhhh. The good old
days. “Growing estrangement” would be a
good policy in this case.
Can we send a few hundred thousand snowflakes to the
kingdom?
American country star Toby Keith
performed at a men’s-only concert in Riyadh on Saturday night, coinciding with
Trump’s visit.
And I bet they were all white men. Well, very, very light brown.
And now we know what Trump meant by “drain the swamp”:
The minister went on to borrow one
of Trump’s favorite campaign slogans, saying that a new relationship between
the United States and the Arab world could “drain the swamps from which
extremism and terrorism emanates.”
Does this mean Saudi Arabia and the CIA will be flushed down
the toilet? I doubt it.
Not when there are hundreds of billions of dollars of huuuuge deals at stake. In this case, silence is golden…literally:
…there was public silence from the
U.S. delegation on the issue of human rights in Saudi Arabia…
Conclusion
Tillerson said the two nations have
"like-minded" goals in the security and economic spheres.
“Like-minded”? Yes;
criminals, one and all.
“drain the swamps from which extremism and terrorism emanates.”
ReplyDeleteBut aren't those two countries the ones responsible for the extremism? The 9/11 hijackers were from S.A., and since then the U.S. has done everything in its power to destabilize and radicalize secular regimes in the area.
The swamp should include Ivanka & Jerod, Nikki Haley, McMaster, ....
DeleteTrump and his wife are way more degnified as our representatives to the outside world. Obama apologies to the Arabs for the bad West is meaningless since he continued with the empire bombing innocent people. Unfortunately, Trump has no opinion but to obey our overlords who want bombing in the ME to create devastations, which will help in the creation of greater Israel.
DeleteSo much for draining the swamp. I wonder if American small business owners can utilize government officials and tax payer dollars to promote their businesses and secure lucrative contracts. Perhaps this will be introduced soon so that everyone can benefit from Trump's complex and unfathomable strategy to Make America Great Again.
ReplyDeleteGet on Gab, I will repost everything you put there.
ReplyDeleteThere are none as blind as those who choose not to see.
ReplyDeleteAll of this was not only merely foreseeable, but almost a certainty. The "all of this" includes, but is not limited to, the following:
(1) Writ large, Donald J. Trump would not be a soldier in the war to rollback the warfare / welfare state; to the contrary, it was eminently foreseeable that he would be as big a champion of, and cheerleader for, the warfare / welfare state as the Hildebeast.
(2) Donald J. Trump did not offer even a 1% greater chance of peace, generally, and with Russia, specifically, than the Hildebeast. Any assertion to the contrary is unsupported by Donald J. Trump's actions throughout his adult life. There is just no evidence upon which to hang one's support for such an idiotic proposition. A guy who is a serial bankrupt, who has stiffed tens of thousands of little guys, i.e., wage earners and small businessmen, a guy who has feasted on eminent domain, a guy who has consistently donated dough to war-mongering neo-cohens who themselves have long been captured by the military industrial complex, and a guy who has promised to escalate the spectacular misallocation of resources from the productive to the parasitic defense industry, is not a guy who is going to present a better chance for peace.
(3) Donald J. Trump never had any intentions of pulling the plug on Obamacare. How could a rational person constantly overlook the fact that the orange one always promised "to repeal and replace" the ACA? He did not unambiguously pronounce that his goal was to terminate the Affordable Care Act and leave it at that.
(4) Like LBJ, Donald J. Trump was going to be the next guns and butter president. Accordingly, throughout the campaign, he insisted that Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security "would not be touched." So, in addition to the gigantic increases in defense and security, the crony capitalist on steroids was going to double down on social welfare transfers.
Note, Trump did not campaign upon the propositions of slashing defense spending, closing military installations around the globe, and immediately withdrawing from NATO. Even if he had, which he did not, one would have been well advised to be skeptical of such campaigning given that Trump did not have a history of making such advocacy, much less actually doing something about it in his "private" life.
Some might ask: what could have the serial adulterer done to actually make a difference in his private sector life to effect the above? Well, he could have articulated and publicized a policy under the terms of which the Trump organization would never do business with any entity that made or sold weapons to the United States or any Moslem nation.
Let us not forget that Trump is the ultimate swamp creature. After all, is he not a crony capitalist? Are not crony capitalists, per se, the ultimate swamp creatures? What, if any, evidence is there to support the position that carnival barking, crony capitalists who have a propensity for prevarication are bold and independent and teeming with intestinal fortitude - the type of men who do present a legitimate chance of making peace a reality?
Moreover, not ten days into his regime, Trump orders drone strikes in Yemen which murdered children - perhaps more than last night's terror in England. Trump supporters have blood on their hands because there was no evidence upon which to argue that Trump would not continue the war crimes committed by Obama and Bush and Clinton and Bush and Ronnie the "FBI snitch" Ray-gun.
The drone strikes have continued. Don't count on Tucker Carlson to give us wall-to-wall coverage of the mass murder of Yemeni and Afghani children, to say nothing of Faux news bozos like Sean Hannity.
Maybe Tom Brady was right to skip the Patriots White House appearance last month.
Liberty Mike
"Any assertion to the contrary is unsupported by Donald J. Trump's actions throughout his adult life."
DeleteOf course, Trump had never bombed anyone prior to becoming president. The same could not be said about Hillary. I find this worth at least 1%, especially when the issue is war with another nuclear power - and in hindsight, I would not have changed my views as articulated at this blog during the campaign.
In any case, Trump offers other gifts to those who dislike government power; these should not be ignored.
"Of course, Trump had never bombed anyone prior to becoming president. The same could not be said about Hillary."
DeleteFirst, did Hillary have command authority to order drone strikes or bombing runs? Sure, she supported bombing and certainly urged Obama (and her husband) to do so.
Second, did we ever hear of Trump denouncing the same? Did we hear of Trump lashing out at the military for the slaughter of hundreds at hospitals in Afghanistan?
The gifts that Trump offers to those who dislike government power are nothing more than Coup-de-villes at the bottom of a cracker jack box.
Liberty Mike
I still can not see your point. Any hint from Trump that he will be less bellicose to any other country or group of people makes him better than Hillary who gave every indication that she was not going to change the current foreign policy direction at all.
DeleteAnd the same holds true domestically as well.
So as bad as Trump is, he is better on every measure than Hillary. He is also better on every measure than any other Republican or Libertarian candidate as well.
Bogart
Did the no talent hack Tobey Keith sing his song to the "ragheads" about "putting a boot up your ass"?
ReplyDeleteThe US is not a Christian nation, it is a Mammon nation.