The September 11, 2001, attacks on the US were committed by 19 men: 15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the United Arab Emirates, 1 from Egypt, and 1 from Lebanon.
Post-9/11, the Bush Administration focused, bizarrely and blatantly incorrectly, on Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Informed "rumors" at the time were that the Bush family had deep business connections with the Saudis, thus official US failure to act against them:
9/12/03 from the American Prospect:
The links between the House of Bush and the House of Saud are deep, overlapping and notoriously opaque: the Saudi investment in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm whose rainmakers include George Bush Senior; the Saudi bankrolling of Poppy's presidential library; the lucrative contracts the Saudis doled out to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was at the company's helm. The main law firm retained by the Saudis to defend them against the 9-11 families is Baker Botts -- as in James Baker, the Bush family consigliere. And, of course, there's oil, the black glue connecting all these dots.
In short, the Bushies have profited mightily from a relationship with a foreign government that can be indirectly, perhaps even directly, implicated in the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents and that has been the driving force behind a worldwide jihad.
Post-Bush:
From Wikipedia:
Saudi Arabia and the United States are strategic allies,[233][234] and since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. has sold $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia.[235][236] However, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States became strained and have witnessed major decline during the last years of the Obama administration.[237] However, relations between the two nations have significantly improved under the presidency of Donald Trump, who has since forged close ties with many members of the Saudi royal family. .[238][239][240] In the first decade of the 21st century the Saudi Arabia paid approximately $100 million to American firms to lobby the U.S. government.[241] The relations with the U.S. became strained following 9/11.[242] American politicians and media accused the Saudi government of supporting terrorism and tolerating a jihadist culture.[243] Indeed, Osama bin Laden and fifteen out of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia;[244] in ISIL-occupied Raqqa, in mid-2014, all 12 judges were Saudi.[245] According to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups... Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."[246] Former CIA director James Woolsey described it as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing."[247] The Saudi government denies these claims or that it exports religious or cultural extremism.[248] In April 2016, Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell off $750 billion in Treasury securities and other U.S. assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be sued over 9/11.[233]
Today, post the blatantly gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Trump is taking basically the same position as Obama did: We leave the Saudis alone because we sell them plenty of US-economy-helping weapons, they're countering Iran, and (per the last sentence in the above Wikipedia entry) the Saudis threaten to sell off US assets and hurt our economy if we "dare" to sanction them.
I'm pretty sure that the Bush Family was utterly corrupt in its personal business Saudi associations, which is why the US didn't condemn the country at the time despite its obvious connection to worldwide terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks.
Obama: Continued US economic/military deals with Saudi Arabia while giving public lip service (and lip service only) denouncing the country's terrorist ties.
Trump: I think Trump is taking the same Realpolitik stance as Obama --- sans the phony public lip service denouncing the country while simultaneously making deals with it.
We, as a country, are obviously deeply intertwined with the Saudis economically. And we obviously need them politically and militarily in the Middle East. Need their PUBLIC position, that is --- but why do we continue to ignore their ongoing behind-the-scenes monetary contribution to Radical Islamism in the area, which also spilled over into the 9/11 attack on our own country? I absolutely do not understand this. I comprehend the Bush Family's personal, reprehensible, corrupt relations with the Saudis (for their own benefit, and at the expense of the United States and the world). And I understand that Obama's hands were probably tied economically.
But WHAT IS TRUMP DOING sucking up to these assholes?
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