U.S. devoted to bolstering tyrants

"Nothing seems to strike deeper unease into the authors of change-oriented, definitely-not-conservative foreign policy as mentioning the fact that much of their Mideast effort is devoted to bolstering and legitimizing an anti-democratic monarchy that executes and tortures people for having the wrong religious views, that conducts awful and disruptive wars, that imposes the world’s most assertive form of official sex discrimination and that often seems to be on the wrong side of our war against a certain terrorist army." "It is an old, very dirty trade-off: We give the House of Saud weapons and political legitimacy; in exchange, they give us petroleum, military support and some measure of pro-Western authoritarian stability in parts of the region." (thanks Amir)