I am rich and comfortable

A political cast in Skypeland descended into nonsense when a Saudi decided to attack the West. At first he said he liked the American people, but did not like the government. Then it slowly devolved into a full-on attack.

He said that there is no unemployment in Saudi Arabia. (Interesting. The estimated unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia is 25%, unofficially, and over 15% officially). When we asked about the standard of living in Saudi Arabia, he said that he personally was rich and comfortable (the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is about $16,744 by one source, and $7870 by another source, as compared to the USA which is over $44,000. When I told him that by those standards, Saudi Arabia is quite poor, he flew into a rage. Of course there are some very wealthy people in Saudi Arabia, but the average person is not very well off.). He said if the Saudis could, they would kill all of us in the US and that they were offended by Americans. He said that the Saudis hated the Americans (funny how he changed his tune in a few minutes, but I have noticed this is very common).

I was not particularly happy about this, and I let him know. I pointed out that a major reason that Osama bin Laden was upset with the US is that it supported the royal family in Saudi Arabia, and vice-versa, which bin Laden despises (they even took away his Saudi citizenship). The Saudi disagreed with this vehemently and said it was because of US behavior in the world.

(This is completely false. Here is a CNN interview of bin Laden by Peter Arnett in 1997:

Q1: Mr Bin Ladin, could you give us your main criticism of the Saudi royal Family that is ruling Saudi Arabia today?
Osama Bin Laden: Regarding the criticisms of the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian peninsula, the first one is their subordination to the US. So, our main problem is the US government while the Saudi regime is but a branch or an agent of the US. By being loyal to the US regime, the Saudi regime has committed an act against Islam. And this, based on the ruling of Shari'a [Islamic jurisprudence], casts the regime outside the religious community. Subsequently, the regime has stopped ruling people according to what God revealed, praise and glory be to Him, not to mention many other contradictory acts. When this main foundation was violated, other corrupt acts followed in every aspect of the country, the economic, the social, government services and so on.

See the text of the full interview at:
http://www.justresponse.net/Bin_Laden4.html)

As always I am irritated by someone who wants to say the US is all bad, but is unable to admit there are any faults with their own country. No country or group is all bad or all good. It was a bit much for me to listen to someone tell me that the US actions in the world are terrible when one of those actions in the world is to keep his own government in power (which might be bad, according to some, but he could not even admit the US was doing that, by training the Saudis and selling them weapons and having troops stationed there for many years). One cannot have a frank and honest dialogue if the nature of the discussion is to be, "Your country is all bad, and mine is all good." It might be a bit difficult to find a receptive audience always with that sort of message. Particularly if you add in, "and we want to kill you all".

Some websites with numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Saudi_Arabia
http://i-cias.com/e.o/saudi_2.htm
http://www.economist.com/countries/SaudiArabia/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-FactSheet