A bill is slowly wending its way through the US, called the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. The act is similar to the one passed against Syria. What is interesting about it is that some congressmen want to use it to cut off all foreign aid provided by the US to the Saudi government.
Foreign aid?
To the Saudi government?
Yet again the learned men and women of the US Congress demonstrate their breathtaking ignorance of the world outside of their individual constituencies. They seem to have confused us with Israel.
For many years we in Saudi Arabia have invested huge sums of money in US treasury bills at very low interest rates. We call this “investing” to preserve our US friend’s dignity. It is “investment” similar to that performed by the US when it tries to protect the Mexican economy from collapsing or when it tries to keep Argentina from going belly up. We “invest” in America because we are and have been for many decades friends of the US. We are happy to do what we can to help our American friends keep their leaky ship of state afloat.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped by both our private and public sector into the US economy, even at times when such investment has not been entirely in our interest. Why did we do this? Because we are friends. Because that is what friends do for one another. After all, a friend in need is a friend indeed.
Massive “investment” in the US economy is only one of the many fields of fruitful cooperation the US has had with us over the years. Let us not forget the crucial role this country has had in ensuring the stability of world oil prices. This task is and has been enormously complicated, and many times it has run contrary to our own interest and to that of our OPEC partners. But we do that because that is what friends do for one another.
Recently, however, we have not been sensing much love from our American allies. Instead we feel great ingratitude and a serious lack of appreciation from our buddies stateside. It may therefore be time for us to look for some other, and more appreciative, areas to put our foreign aid — excuse me, I mean “investment”.
It is to the East that we must turn, dear readers.
After all, it is in the East that the sun rises and in the West that it sets.
