{"id":180200,"date":"2017-06-26T19:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T00:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/06\/26\/theres-stupid-and-theres-psychopathic-and-then-there-is-the-house-of-saud\/"},"modified":"2017-06-26T19:43:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T00:43:00","slug":"theres-stupid-and-theres-psychopathic-and-then-there-is-the-house-of-saud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/06\/26\/theres-stupid-and-theres-psychopathic-and-then-there-is-the-house-of-saud\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s Stupid, and There’s Psychopathic, and Then There Is the House of Saud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just 24 hours after Turkey sent troops to protect Qatar, Saudi officials announced their public support for the Kurds in Syria.<\/div>\n

\u2014 Leith Abou Fadel (@leithfadel) June 12, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The House of Saud, the Gift that Keeps Giving<\/i><\/div>\n

I am referring to, of course, the latest kerfuffle between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, with the rest of the its toady petty monarchs around the Persian Gulf, have recalled diplomats, expelled Qatari citizens, and blockaded the land border to Qatar<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For years, the tiny, energy-rich country of Qatar<\/a> has carved out a niche in the Arab world by trying to be everything to everyone. It housed an American military base<\/a> and flooded the region\u2019s airwaves with its influential media, all while keeping close ties to Iran and a wide selection of Islamist movements.<\/p>\n

On Monday, five countries in the region announced that they were forcing Qatar to choose: Its powerful neighbor Saudi Arabia<\/a>, Egypt<\/a> and at least three other Arab nations severed all ties with the country, escalating their accusations that the Qatari monarchy supported Sunni Islamist terrorism and Iranian designs on the region.<\/p>\n

Those Arab nations not only abruptly suspended diplomatic relations, as they have in the past, but also surprised many by cutting off land, air and sea travel to and from Qatar. All but Egypt, which has 250,000 people working there, ordered their citizens to leave Qatar.<\/p>\n

The move created an immediate crisis for Qatar, whose only land border is with Saudi Arabia and which imports about 40 percent of its food from the Saudis. Residents said that people were stocking up on food and cash. And Qatari diplomats and citizens were scrambling to meet a 48-hour deadline to leave some Persian Gulf countries where they had been posted.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Qatar, which in the context of the Gulf monarchies I would describe as the best of a bad lot, has been ruffling feathers in the reason for a while.<\/p>\n

It has been generally supportive of the Islamic Brotherhood and its related groups (most notably Hamas), and it has relatively friendly relations with Iran, but the thing that really upsets other regional governments, particularly the House of Saud, is that it operates the Al Jazeera which actually provides relatively impartial news coverage of the region (except, of course, in Qatar, funny how that works).<\/p>\n

Further complicating the matter is the fact that Doha has been cultivating a relationship with Turkey, and will be allowing Ankara to construct a military base on the peninsula<\/a>, which would put a Turkish military presence in the area for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman empire.<\/p>\n

This, along with a mammoth air base operated by the US in Qatar means that their military influence is far greater than their (90% expat) population and the size of their military would imply.<\/p>\n

In any case, a list of demands was presented to Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states:<\/p>\n