Balance of Power

Jon Stewart discusses the White House plans to sell $20 billion in weapons to the Saudi Arabian royal family.  Part of the Bush administration offer of more than $60 billion in new weapons and military assistance to Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries that have diverse ideas about where boundaries should be drawn.   Should be good for business, if you're an arms dealer. Video expires on Sept. 23rd due to draconian licence deals, but read the post continuation for the full transcripts.

"The Iraq War is very complicated. It's one reason why Barack Obama's supposed foreign policy inexperience is going to be an important issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. You can't have a newbie overthrowing the delicate balance that we have engineered and maintained in this complex region.

For instance, a weakened Iraq has meant a strengthened Iran. And since Iran is Shia, our Sunni friends in Saudi Arabia are none to happy about that. But that's no problem for our experienced hands.

Yes, on July 28 the White House announced plans to sell $20 billion in weapons to the Saudi Arabian royal family. Boom! Balance of power restored.

Trust me, you don't have to worry about billions of dollars of weapons going to a country like that, because may I remind you, a full 20 percent of the 9/11 hijackers were not from there.

Of course, this move may intimidate our circumcised friends to the west in Israel. They may be nervous because Saudi Arabia is considered somewhat friendly with Hamas.

So I don't overstate the case: The Saudis like Hamas, but it's not like they've held telethons for them in the past... Wait, OK, I'm being told they have actually held telethons for Hamas in the past, but that's not going to be any problem.

Because a few weeks ago the White House announced that it will increase aid to Israel by 25 percent—meaning an additional $30 billion over the next decade to them.

Oh billions of dollars, is there no dispute you can't settle?

You might ask, how did we get so experienced at this? Well, we've been rescuing the Middle East for some time now. Think back to 1990 when an oil-rich, very nice little country named Kuwait was invaded by the very not-nice Iraq.

Of course we stopped short of actually invading Iraq. I think you remember the secretary of defense at that time—someone named Dick Cheney—making a pretty strong case against it. He said it would be a quagmire. He was smart.

See at that time we had to weaken Saddam Hussein, who had become very powerful after purchasing a buttload of weapons from—oh boy—America... Oops!

See we had to give him the weapons because he was at war with Iran.

But see, then once Saddam got real powerful, we had to worry that he would topple our friends in Saudi Arabia, which is why we put troops there, which kind of pissed off that Osama bin Laden guy, who had also become really powerful fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, after getting weapons from... son of a bitch!

My point is, foreign policy experience is very important! Because it helps you learn nation-building, which is knowledge we can take to our own country and apply to our own infrastructure, like when our roads crumble. Or when our bridges collapse. Or when a hurricane wipes out one of our cities. "