If anything, the crackdown on dissent in Bahrain is worse than in Syria, because of the overtones of ethnic cleansing against the Shia (At least the Syrians oppress everyone equally), and we are arming them:

Despite Bahrain’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. has continued to provide weapons and maintenance to the small Mideast nation.

Defense Department documents released to ProPublica give the fullest picture yet of the arms sales: The list includes ammunition, combat vehicle parts, communications equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, and an unidentified missile system. (Read the documents.)

The documents, which were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and cover a yearlong period ending in February 2012, still leave many questions unanswered. It’s not clear whether in each case the arms listed have been delivered. And some entries that only cite the names of weapons may in fact refer to maintenance or spare parts.

For all the evil that the rulers in Syria have done, they have not arrested doctors for treating protestors that came into their emergency rooms, and they haven’t demolished mosques of other sects, as the the Al Khalifa monarchy has done in Bahrain.

Both regimes should be replaced by something that better serves the needs of their citizens, but we are letting the House of Saud dictate our priorities, and surprisingly, they oppose a secular regime run largely by non-Sunnis, and they support a Sunni monarchy like themselves.

The real problem here is that the Arab monarchies will eventually fall, either violently in the manner of the Romanoffs of Russia, or peacefully, in the manner of the House of Windsor in the UK, and the more that we prop them up, the bigger the backlash when they fall.

Iran’s transition from US ally to foe, which derived directly from our unqualified support of a despot, would not suit our interests, nor the interests of the people in that part of the world.

My rule of thumb here is that if the House of Saud is for it, I’m against it.