Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Our Friends In The Middle East

Being a lefty noninterventionist (this is not an absolute position, just a strong lean), I, or people like me, get screamed at a lot for being too soft on whoever the Big Bad of the Day is. Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, Russia... 

When we urgently have to go bomb the shit out of the Big Bad's innocent civilians, people like me tend to object, and not because we love Saddam or Gadhafi or Ahmadinejad or Assad or Putin usually, but because we don't like blowing people up and don't think we have a very good record of accomplishments when we do.

And then there's our ally Saudi Arabia. It might be the worst regime in the world, by whatever measure. Close to it, anyway. It isn't that I want to go bomb Riyadh, but I do wish that some of the people who love to scream at hippies for loving dictators would explain their silence on the country, occasionally.

The UK will deploy RAF Typhoon jets to defend Saudi Arabia in response to escalating Houthi missile and drone attacks, the government has said.

Sure there are always Realpolitik arguments, but lefty RealPolitik arguments generally don't get much consideration.