Also worth considering here are the strong parallels between the US relationship today with the Saudi family and that we had with the Shah of Iran in the early 70s.

There too we balanced the extreme amount of capital we were shipping to the Shah in exchange for Iranian oil with massive sales of military hardware.

There too the Shah (with no help from us, not needed, just as the Saudis do not need our help in this mission so long as the people remain cowed) acted ruthlessly to keep an extremely oppressed and insurgent populace in check with one hand, while he entertained US dignitaries in opulent excess with the other.

There too, as late as 1977 the DIA predicted that the Shah would remain strongly in power for at least another 10 years; as I suspect estimates for the Saudi family are at least as bold.

But in such a powder keg of oppression it only takes a spark, and with Arab spring burning brightly all around the Kingdom, such sparks are easily found.

These were and are complex and important relationships. We bite off our nose today to spite our faces over our anger and embarrassment at being rebuked by the Iranians over 30 years ago; can we afford risking a similar 30 plus years of national sour grapes when (and it is when, not if) the Saudis meet their come uppence from their populace as well?? We need to work to get straight with the governments AND the populace of both of these important nations sooner than later.

All I have ever advocated is that we need to focus less on attacking and defeating symptoms, and spend more energy focusing on repairing the flawed dysfunctional relationships that I see as the causal roots of those same symptoms. So what if I am wrong, what do we lose by getting straight with our own professed principles? Nothing. We can begin to repair our reputation in the region, and an honorable reputation is a hard commodity to put a price on.

We Americans can be generous and honorable and self-less to a fault; we can also be self-serving, callus, arrogant and petulant. The problem is that sometimes we act like the latter while seeing ourselves as the former. We can be better than this. We are better than this. But the first step to getting better is to recognize we have a problem and to take responsibility for our actions that contributed to bringing us here.