The Saud Squad

Holding an anti-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia is so absurd that it defies comprehension. Everyone who knows most anything about Middle Eastern affairs knows that Saudi Arabia is the world’s #1 state sponsor of Islamic terrorism. In fact, President Trump himself made this very claim a number of years back. Publicly practicing or converting to Christianity is outlawed and frequently punished by death. Saudi Arabia is also the most repressive and violent Islamic theocracy on Earth.

Yet this is where President Trump decided to deliver his anti-terrorism address to leaders of various Muslim countries, and subsequently to conduct a massive arms deal with the Saudi government. If all the fanfare wasn’t ludicrous enough, Toby Keith stopped by to up the ante. The sheer insanity of this event was only outdone by the reaction of various Trump supporters praising it. Sadly, many of those heaping such praise were Christians, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are promoting a deal which will assuredly lead to the murder of countless Christians (and other civilians) in the Arab world. Thankfully, Senator Rand Paul is leading an effort to block the arms sale.

Some libertarians may wonder, “I thought diplomacy, meeting with foreign leaders, and trade were all good things.” They generally are, when they are geared towards reducing war and facilitating genuinely free-market trade. But celebrating, and then proceeding to provide weapons to a brutal theocratic regime that massacres Christians (and countless others) is a very different story.

Radical Islamic terrorism is real. The existential threat it poses to the west is almost always vastly overblown, but nevertheless it is a real thing that kills real people. So, in what possible world does it make sense to sell weapons to a top financier of Islamic terrorism? The neocons are alive and well in Trump’s administration, and if we are to have any hope for peace in the next 4-8 years, he must exile them from the Beltway.

The other key element from the Riyadh Summit that highlights its absurdity is that Iran and Syria were targeted as somehow being the major threats to peace. These are countries where Christianity is openly practiced and the governments are elected, as opposed to the Islamic monarchy of Saudi Arabia where publicly practicing Christianity will get you beheaded. This is not to say that the governments of Iran and Syria are good (they aren’t), but they are vastly less dangerous than the Saudi government.

Does this sound like a smart move for peace? In what logical scenario would arming terrorists somehow lead to defeating terrorism? Do the Christians who are supporting this move think that Jesus will be pleased with them for backing policies which will lead to countless innocent people being murdered by Islamic extremists?

Pray for the Christians in the Middle East who will suffer vastly increased persecution over this folly. Pray for the Christians in the west who are blindly and foolishly supporting this policy. And pray for President Trump, that he realizes the madness of this deal, exiles the neocons from his administration, stops allowing the U.S government to arm terrorist organizations, and shuts down the foreign aid pipeline that props up these dictators.