Boston Globe praises Saudi "statesmanship"

By Ed Lasky

The Boston Globe (owned by the New York Times) takes a breathtaking step into fantasy-land today as its editorial page offers paeans to "Saudi Statesmanship". This gushing praise is prompted by the deal worked out under Saudi auspices for Hamas and Fatah to commit to a truce. Of course, this is only a gambit by the Palestinians to bring about a resumption of foreign aid. Saudi Arabia has already indicated that it will breach international sanctions and start funding the Hamas-Fatah "government". Captain's Quarter's skewers this announced truce this morning.

What is truly incredible is that the Boston Globe adamantly ignores the facts in its rush to praise the desert tyranny.

In the Globe's editorial there is NO mention of the fact that Saudi funding of extremism throughout the region (and the world) has created the conditions in which hatred, extremism and violence thrive. No mention of the fact that Saudis were the key "players' in Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. No mention that Saudis refuse to recognize rights of women, refuse to allow Christians and Jews to worship in their kingdom, and have been empowering Hamas.

Saudi Arabia refuses to use its oil wealth to create conditions for peace. For example, by funding schools and textbooks which teach subjects other than the Koran, or which promote peace not prejudice. Yet somehow in the Globe's view they are to be praised, for among other things, working to bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Recall the delusional New York Times-touted "Saudi Peace Plan" - a plan that was designed to get Israel to completely move out of territory captured in the defensive war of 1967 and a "just" resolution of the refugee issue in return for vague "promises" that the Saudis would ensure all other Arab nations would abide by peace agreements with Israel.

This the Boston Globe ignores while it lauds Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that is homophobic, racist, and misogynistic. The Globe instead compares the Saudis' noble statesmanship to American "bungling" - a bungling that has brought democracy, albeit imperfectly, to millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, has led to the abandonment of Libya's nuclear program, has led to Syria being forced out of their colonization of Lebanon, whose efforts - as imperfect as they may have been-- have started to cause pressures within Iran, and have made the first explicit promise that America supports the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Saudi policies are to be praised and ours condemned?

Investors Business Daily has an editorial today which provides a breath of reality, by pointing out that attacks on American forces in Iraq are emanating from Sunni areas, and that these militants are most likely receiving military supplies from..you guessed it...Saudi Arabia

What statesmanship!

Update: Youssef Ibrahim comments in yesterday's New York Sun about the role of Saudi Arabia. From The Saudis and the Palestinians:

The Saudis have no special formula to end the killing among the Palestinian Arabs. Indeed, they have promoted, with their checkbook diplomacy, the fundamentalists in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups for years. They have built scores of mosques and madrassas in the West Bank and Gaza to spread their fanatical Wahhabi creed and have actively undermined Palestinian Arab Christian political leaders and mayors in the West Bank.