The Battle of the Rebuttals

Submitted by Pied Piper (Saudi Arabia), Mar 3, 2012 at 16:43

"If all of that is no genuine despotism and bloody Oriental tyranny pure and simple, then what is ?"

The State Dept. and Amnesty Intl. reports you quote make interesting not to say wacky reading......but they are pure and laughable bunk.

I won't deny that all the "misdeeds" listed may have occurred at one time or another in the Kingdom.....but they've also occurred (at one time or another) in the USA, let alone anywhere else. To deny that they have is simply an exercise in pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

After all, even the Constitution of the United States clearly states that it is illegal to advocate the overthrow of the established government. Ditto in Saudi Arabia. The fact that one state is ruled by an elected president and another by an absolute monarch is beside the point......both adhere rigidly and inexorably to this belief of the sanctity of the established government. The difference is simply one of interpretation and the scope of one's vision (and, usually, one's political agenda), but at bottom both countries - all countries- are exactly the same in this respect.

Again, all the accusations by the State Dept. and Amnesty Intl. have indeed taken place in the Kingdom....but...they are so infrequent as to be inconsequential and occur only within the framework of strict guidelines and principals. You make it sound like all this takes place by whim and caprice and that these practices are taking place on a daily basis. That is patently absurd.

The State of Texas conducted 472 executions between 1976 and 2011. I don't know the figure for the Kingdom, but I bet it was close to the Texas numbers......and we're just talking about ONE state in the union. All these things are relative is my point.

If the State Dept. really believed and condemned (it doesn't) the evil practices in the Kingdom it so pompously publishes, one would think the US would immediately break diplomatic relations - at the very least- with the Kingdom forthwith. The fact that it doesn't speaks volumes of which the less said the better.

The fact is the vast majority of Saudi citizens are comparatively happy and satisfied with how things are run in the Kingdom. That is not to say that there are no complaints and that there are no injustices. To take one famous example of women not being allowed to drive cars in the Kingdom or cannot travel without permission. This is true but it is done to protect females, not to restrict them. Most women have no problem with this practice. In a lot of ways, the Kingdom does not exist in a "medieval" mind-set as it does with a "wild, wild West" mentality. The cornucopia of civil and criminal laws that exist in Western countries simply doesn't exist here. Therefore "punishment" has to be swift, harsh and final, just like it used to be in Dodge City.

I am not saying there are no "problems" in the KIngdom. But the way it's usually depicted by the Western press is far from reality and belongs more to the sphere of fiction and fantasy.

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