Eric Zuesse

The Saud family, Saudi Arabia’s royals, have called together a meeting on December 15th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of their fellow fundamentalist Sunnis who are fighting against the secular Assad government to take over Syria, and the Sauds will announce after the conference which groups will have the West’s blessings.

The only armed group that has thus far been announced to have been invited is Jaysh al-Islam, which is a Salafist-Wahhabist fundamentalist organization, and like all Salafists and Wahhabists, is rabidly anti-Shiite. By contrast, Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is a Shiite, and, furthermore, he has always insisted upon a strict separation of church-and-state; so, he’s considered like the devil, by the Sauds and other Wahhabists and Salafists (including the leaders of America’s other Arabic allies: Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain).

This hatred against Shiites, and, really, all non-Sunnis, originated long ago:

In 1744, the two founders of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Saud and Muhammad Ibn Wahhab, swore their mutual oath that the Sauds would exterminate Shiites, and that Wahhabist clergy would recognize the Sauds as the rulers appointed by God. From that time to this, little has changed in Saudi Arabia, except the discovery in 1938 of the world’s largest reserves of oil, which, moreover, is the cheapest-to-produce type of oil. The United States allied with the Saud family in 1945 so as to guarantee to America lots of cheap oil, and to guarantee to the Sauds lots of American military support for keeping the Saud family in power there.

The American expectation had been that the jihadist clergy wouldn’t be so influential to the Sauds if the Sauds had all the weapons they need in order to terrorize the non-royals there; but, in recent decades, that hasn’t turned out to remain true. Chopping off the heads of lots of nonbelievers no longer suffices for the Sauds. In recent times, it turns out that when clergy question the Sauds’ anointment by God, the Sauds need to pay attention, after all, notwithstanding the American alliance. Arab Spring made this clear. It’s a new world now. The Sauds are pressured, more than ever, to kill Shiites and other non-believers (people who aren’t Wahhabist or — as Wahhabism is known outside Saudi Arabis — Salafists). The only trick is for the Sauds to hide this intention until they’re fully in a position to act upon it. 9/11 was just kids’ stuff.

Wikipedia says: "Jaysh al-Islam leader Zahran Alloush gave a speech on the merits of Hajj in 2013 and praised Usama bin Laden, addressing him by the honorific 'Sheikh' and the honorific 'rahimahu Allah’. … Alloush addressed the Al-Qaeda organization Jabhat al-Nusra as 'our brothers’.” However, Al Qaeda itself has not been invited to the Riyadh conference, because doing that would be too much for the U.S. public to take. The Sauds need to fool Western publics, and therefore need to mind their manners as they proceed along. Cutting off heads of Saudis who challenge the regime or the Quran is one thing, but allowing Al Nusra or any other branch of Al Qaeda at their conference would significantly disturb Westerners.

Wikipedia adds: "Alloush said that Alawites are 'more infidel than Jews and Christians’.” Assad isn’t just a Shiite, he’s an Alawhite, which is the least sectarian type of Shiite — like an atheist, in a fundamentalist’s eyes (and, even in the West, atheists are feared and despised — bigotry is strong in every religion; it’s how aristocrats become able to manipulate masses).

By contrast, the type of jihadists the West is considering for inclusion as ‘moderates’ is the type that can fool Westerners. All of that type are people who live outside Syria and who aren’t risking their own lives in jihad, but who are nonetheless aiming to ‘represent’ the people who are risking their lives there. In other words, these are slicksters, who seek acceptance both from suckers in the West, and from terrorists inside Syria.

Thus, some of the attendees will look like any businessman one would see on 5th Avenue in NYC, or like any candidate for President of the United States; and one such person who will be attending the conference is Dr. Khaled Khoja, President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. He gave an address recently, on October 31st, at Britain’s prestigious neoconservative International Institute for Strategic Studies, where he spoke with gentlemanly hatred of both Russia, and the leading Shiite nation, Iran; and he said (40:00- on the video there) that only civilians were being killed in Syria by Russia’s bombings in Syria, and that Russia especially targets hospitals. So, he looks and sounds like just the right type of person for U.S. President Barack Obama to present in the West as being an acceptable person to rule the Syrian people. Obviously, someone such as Khoja would be loathed by both Syrians and ISIS etc., even at the outset, if he were to become appointed to lead Syria, but this is a show put on only for Westerners anyway. That’s where the first suckers must be targeted and manipulated. And the case for this is unmistakable:

All polling that Western firms have done in Syria shows clearly that in any free and fair election in that country, only Assad would have any chance to win. He is supported by a majority of Syrians in all polls, while all polls also show that Syrians feel fear and disgust at the United States and blame it for ISIS, which is almost universally despised among the Syrian population.

So: although the Sauds will ultimately select the candidates to replace Assad, or else will make the first-round selection of the West’s stooge to rule in Syria, it’s not going to help anybody but the West’s aristocrats, who are championing ‘democracy in Syria’ by insisting that that very thing be prohibited. Nor will this conference help to reduce the refugee crisis that the EU is experiencing from America’s latest round of international invasions: Libya, Ukraine, Syria, and so forth. It’s merely a PR operation that’s being carried out by the West’s aristocracies, to put on a show for the West’s suckers, while carving up the world.

The people who should be removed from power are clearly the leaders in the West, where democracy has died, and where deceit of the masses by the aristocracy has taken its place.

Only if the charade is forced to end, can peace become established again. But maybe things have already gone beyond even the possibility of that happening. Who will even allow the masses now to know the truth?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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