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LTC Multifunctional Logistician
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I think you need to re-word we to the Liberals and the answer is pretty easy as why aren't the Libs not fired up about this. The Daily Show, Ellen, Oprah, the oracles of international relations on The View, the Democrat MSM mouthpieces all have not told their audience to be upset about this.
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Capt Jeff S.
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You need not wonder. It is most every other county’s interest to see us taken down a notch or two. We are not the victim here as we bear some culpability for the way we are perceived around the world. Why are they trying to drive a wedge between the US and Saudi Arabia? The Saudi Royal Family stays in power largely to our influence. Years ago we made a deal with them that was mutually beneficial. In exchange for our support and protection, they only sell oil in exchange for US dollars. We get oil cheaper than anyone else because they have to first convert their currency to USD to pay for it. Our dollar was the most stable and it used to be backed by gold and became the world reserve currency. When the US no longer backed the dollar with gold, our money became worthless, but it is still the world reserve currency because our country is stable and people’s expectations remain high that the US economy will continue to be strong and a stabilizing influence on the world economy.

As an aside, you may recall that banks used to give notes stating they had X amount of gold or silver (something of intrinsic value) and these notes had value because they directly represented what was held at the bank and at any time they could be turned in and the bank would give that amount of gold in exchange for the note. It didn’t take bankers long to figure out they could make loans on what they had in their reserve because people were exchanging the notes instead of withdrawing their gold. It would be highly unlikely that everyone who had gold in the bank would want to withdraw it at the same time and so banks began making loans with this gold they had in reserve and it didn’t really belong to them. But the loans provided a stimulus to business and this practice became accepted. The bank notes took on a value of their own and became accepted as currency. And today, with banks not storing gold and having as little as 20% of reserves against the loans they have outstanding, the banks are creating wealth out of nothing but people’s expectations of the value those paper notes represent. The paper itself is worthless and should everyone make a run on the bank and demand their money, the bank would have to close its doors until the loans it has out are repaid, assuming not too many of those loans are bad loans that won’t get repaid.

Now how does that relate? Well for starters, other countries that we have borrowed money from (like China, Japan, etc.) have figured out that they have been giving us real goods (TV’s, stereos, appliances, cars, etc.) in exchange for dollars whose only value is what people think they are worth. And the US is now over 21 Trillion in debt. We pay our debts with worthless money we print and this puts more dollars in circulation which leads to inflation and each dollar which represents a portion of our economy now represents a smaller portion with more dollars circulating. In effect, we are stealing from the very people we owe by paying them with worthless dollars whose value is only what everyone else thinks they are worth. Furthermore, when we want oil, we can simply print money and pay for it and because we don’t have to exchange it, inflation is never factored in to the price we pay. We can get our oil by printing more money or by borrowing money from other countries and paying them back with the money we printed. Either way, we are ripping them off and they understand that the way to prevent our doing that is to knock the USD off as the world reserve currency and replace it with something else. They would like to drive a wedge between us and the Saudis so that oil could be freely traded on open markets without it having to be converted first to USD.

We aren’t innocent victims here and other countries have sloped the playing field to benefit themselves to make up for what they perceive as unfairness on our part.

I guess the most simple way to describe it would be to simply say, “Well, it’s complicated.” There is wrong on every side and we MUST get a handle on our debt if we desire to continue on as a solvent, sovereign nation. If we continue on our present course, we will default. We may even find our country selling off land to pay our debts like France did with the Louisiana Purchase and Russia did when they sold us Alaska. Sound crazy? But is it? If America is not sovereign it may be forced on us by International decree.

There are forces at work (both internal and external to our government) seeking to weaken our econonic influence and to subjugate America’s sovereignty to international control. President Trump is working to save this country and the Democrats (who think our Constitution is old and in need of revision) want to transform America into a Democratic Socialist Republic based on the European model. Take a look at Europe. It’s leaders are not listening to their own people and the UN has been forcing them to accept refugees that the people don’t want. Is that what we need?

Your thoughts? Anyone?
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SGT Combat Engineer
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Saudi Arabia is a country that we want to be able to work with. there are some arguments a person could present against doing that that go way beyond the death of Khashoggi. for starters there is the amount of noxious political religious ideology that they have disseminated in the past for example through text books that include anti-semitic content. Ubl was Saudi. there is a wahhabi like component to the mixture that is the violent salafism of al-Qaeda. And human rights in Saudi Arabia are obviously a disaster. But the Saudis are opposed to Iran and to ISIS/IS. That also puts them in opposition to Putin's Russia. these common enemies make Saudi Arabia useful to the United States.

Vladimir Putin's Russia is an adversary of the United States. we might currently be using more polite terms like competitor, but when civilian citizens of one of America's closest allies are dying of nerve agent poisoning as results of Russian Gru operations, I think we're beyond the competitor stage.

So when you're still hoping to be able to work with a country, I think you look for different ways of addressing their bad behavior, then you would be looking for when dealing with a country that you've pretty much written off as a potential enemy in our next war. On a more minor point, the Russians use these contractors as a really lame attempt at a surrogate fighting force. They are pseudo-proxies. Remember that the previously attempted to attack a position that had American military on it in Syria. you may remember that James mattis gave one of his more popular nonchalant soundbites in describing how the US reacted to that threat.

Vladimir Putin is not responsible Western friendly leader nor is he interested in becoming one. We have not picked a fight with him he is continually seeking to pick one with us, probably in order to divert the attention of his own population from the domestic problems in Russia.
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