Exactly. The consequences of us not being there would be very bad. Welcome to the real world.

Consequences for who or what? Oil? Israel? Those aren't our problems. We need energy independence and reliance on non-fossil energy in the future. And Israel/Palestine are two sides invoking religion to say that their version of sky fairy said this land belongs to them and not the other side. None of that should be our business.

So you support the regime of SA, but based on how they have treated their own people, the leadership isn't worse than what Qaddafi did to Libya or even Saddam in Iraq. So wars and regime change is reserved for only those countries not providing us a military support base and oil?

Same as it's always been. You're just now figuring this out?

Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't really care about the payments to a Sunni terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda (they've done it off the books themselves) even though it gives them a public excuse to be angry, but they're ****ed at the payments to Iran and Shia groups.

Simply asking if he's okay with that

My organization just restricted all travel to/through Qatar, unless it's not to Doha. AA code shares (OneWorld) with them, so it's hurting AA.

trump really ****ed of Qatar with his tweets, and they are thinking about denying our access to their big military base, which was discussed in posts previously...

All the Money they get from making folks go through customs every time they land at that base (even when they're stationed there) was probably used to finance the payoff to Iran anyways.

Loosing basing rights to Qatar would be a little rough in the immediate time frame but there's plenty of space in the desert where the US can put folks and give the governments $$$.

Hmm gee wonder who is responsible for a lot of the unrest. Wouldn't have anything to do with toppling dictators and selling weapons to terrorists.

It's all due to everyone's insatiable desire for "stuff".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Numg_0dxiwk

It is us as a country. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been extremely irresponsible on who we consider "friends"...apart from the Rand Paul types every politician has interests in fueling dictators/bad people in various hot spots in the world. Not saying we should be completely isolationist and ignore the strategic and economic implications of being friends with a country like Qatar and Saudi Arabia but our foreign policy has been extremely inconsistant in that arena.