A journalism note on today's Washington Post article that the Saudis are privately furious that Trump won't give the Kingdom more military help against the Houthis. Let's get real. I have written a book about Saudi Arabia and this is the template they have used for decades, to throw a fit if the United States doesn't rush to their defense. Saudi Arabia has been the single largest purchaser of American arms for decades — tens of billions of dollars, more than any other country on earth, including Israel. The Trump administration just approved a $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35s on top of that. This is not an underarmed nation. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Saudis had to invite U.S. troops onto their own soil to protect them — a decision that enraged Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalists who considered it sacrilege to have infidel soldiers, men and women, stationed in the land of the holy city of Mecca. The pattern hasn't changed. The Saudis went to war with the Houthis in 2015. Despite a bigger army and far superior weaponry, they were fought to a standstill by a ragtag militia in the poorest country in the Arab world. Now the Houthis are active again, hitting Saudi oil infrastructure and cutting into Riyadh's profits — and MBS is angry that Washington won't ride to the rescue again. Meanwhile, it's MBS and the Gulf states who have talked Trump out of wider military action against Tehran three separate times. The Saudis have spent half a century using petrodollars to buy the best weapons money can buy, then hiring the United States as a personal protection force to actually use them. They don't want to fight. They want someone else to fight for them while they sit back and count the oil money. Those days are hopefully over.