The one certainty in the vast and in-chartable morass of Middle Eastern conflict is that the Sunni Saudi regime supports and exports a violent form of fundamentalism called "Wahhabism." Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades. It might well be twice that number. By comparison, the Soviets spent about $7 billion spreading communism worldwide in the 70 years from 1921 and 1991. “....donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” Secretary of State Hilary Clinton wrote in a memo. “More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups.” And it’s not just the Saudis: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also implicated in the memo.
So what is our motive for supporting them in their anti-Shia war in Yemen?
Sullivan hates Trump but wants out of Syria:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/andrew-sullivan-establishment-will-never-say-no-to-a-war.html
From Dwight Lee’s encyclopedia entry on “Redistribution:”
"....most government transfers are not from the rich to the poor. Instead, government takes from the relatively unorganized (e.g., consumers and general taxpayers) and gives to the relatively organized (groups politically organized around common interests, such as the elderly, sugar farmers, and steel producers). The most important factor in determining the pattern of redistribution appears to be political influence, not poverty. Of the $1.07 trillion in federal transfers in 2000, only about 29 percent, or $312 billion, was means tested (earmarked for the poor). The other 71 percent—about $758 billion in 2000—was distributed with little attention to need."
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