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Trump’s Goes to Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem

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On his way to Riyadh, President Trump should watch Noam Chomsky’s TV interview on May 17, talking about Saudi Arabia. Chomsky’s observation of the Desert Kingdom might help remind the President who the Saudis really are. “Saudi Arabia is the center of radical Islamic extremism” Chomsky stated. “The spread of Saudi extremist Wahhabi doctrine over the Sunni world is one of the real disasters of the modern era. It’s a source of not only funding for extremist radical Islam and the jihadi outgrowths of it, but also, doctrinally, mosques, clerics, schools, madrassas (where you study just Qur’an), is spreading all over the huge Sunni areas from Saudi influence,” he added. 
 
Trump, however, is not going to Saudi Arabia to pick a fight. His advisors explained that the President’s goal is to show his support to the Sunni Muslim world. 
 
According to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, the President’s speech at the opening ceremony of yet another Saudi center “for fighting radicalism and promoting moderation,” would incredibly focus on  “a peaceful vision of Islam to dominate across the world.” (added emphasis). 
 
We will have to wait until the President delivers his speech. But based on what McMaster’s briefing, Trump’s speech is likely to echo President Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009, in Cairo, in which he falsely attributed “tolerance and racial equality” to Islam, and whitewashed Islamic terrorism, claiming: “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.” While the leaders of some 50 countries with a Muslim majority would no doubt be delighted, this is strange coming from a U.S. General who spent years leading the battle against violent Sunni and Shia Muslim extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 

The Trump administration’s effort to help a Sunni coalition against ISIS and Iran is important, because “We all have the same enemy and we all want the same thing.” Is there no one in the administration to remember and remind Trump what happened when the U.S. helped the Sunni Taliban to defeat the former Soviet Union? Al Qaeda happened.

And why does the President have to call for an “Arab NATO”? Isn’t that what the Saudi-led and funded Arab League for?

Likewise, why didn’t the White House insist the President will not attend any meeting with the “Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir — who is wanted on genocide charges by the international criminal court?

The Saudis also invited Mahmud Abbas, who met with the President earlier this month and scheduled to meet him again in Ramallah, to Trump’s meeting with the heads of 50 Arab States.  Was it part of the condition to $350 billion worth of Saudi investment in the U.S. ($110 billion in arms)? The other condition, as gleaned from the Arab media, is the recognition of an independent Palestinian State.

The President’s announced plans for his visit in Jerusalem demonstrates Washington’s quiescence to Saudi conditions. This is why, as was announced by the White House the President will not be accompanied as protocol would have it by his old friend, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he goes to pray at the Western Wall, and why he will refrain from following up on his promise to locate the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the Capital of the Jewish State of Israel.

Instead, Trump is said to be eager to show off his artful dealing by forcing a negotiation between Israel and the terrorist Palestinians. Trump’s advisors should have done well to discourage him from the certain failure of tilting the Palestine windmills.