"If you want to find proof of the rank hypocrisy and double standards that underlie international relations in general and the argument over Syria in particular, you could do an awful lot worse than to examine the recent spat between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Saudi Arabia, despite it’s recent embrace of the cause of democracy and freedom in Syria, is and has been for the past 80 odd years one of the most violently repressive and backwards societies in the world: an absolute dictatorship replete with “morality police” and various other kinds of religious totalitarians.*
Saudi Arabia not only violently represses and persecutes its small Shiite minority**, it militarily intervened in neighboring Bahrain to help that country’s authoritarian political elite viciously and cruelly repress a popular uprising by the majority Shiites. The Saudi troops that went to Bahrain to fight democracy and to advance the cause of authoritarianism, monarchy, and repression were not only using Western weapons, they were actually trained by Western militaries (there have, of course, been no calls for the US to cut off its massive and growing arms trade with Saudi Arabia, a relationship that is several orders of magnitude larger than Russia’s arms trade with Syria). In addition to intervening in its neighbor Bahrain’s “internal affairs” Saudi Arabia has been a leading voice for intervention in Syria and has repeatedly argued that the Syrian rebels must been armed and equipped. The Saudi government is even considering the drastic step of paying the salaries of rebel soldiers in an attempt to force additional defections from the Syrian army." (thanks Yaman)
Saudi Arabia not only violently represses and persecutes its small Shiite minority**, it militarily intervened in neighboring Bahrain to help that country’s authoritarian political elite viciously and cruelly repress a popular uprising by the majority Shiites. The Saudi troops that went to Bahrain to fight democracy and to advance the cause of authoritarianism, monarchy, and repression were not only using Western weapons, they were actually trained by Western militaries (there have, of course, been no calls for the US to cut off its massive and growing arms trade with Saudi Arabia, a relationship that is several orders of magnitude larger than Russia’s arms trade with Syria). In addition to intervening in its neighbor Bahrain’s “internal affairs” Saudi Arabia has been a leading voice for intervention in Syria and has repeatedly argued that the Syrian rebels must been armed and equipped. The Saudi government is even considering the drastic step of paying the salaries of rebel soldiers in an attempt to force additional defections from the Syrian army." (thanks Yaman)
