Director of "The Kingdom" talks about the UAE

Peter Berg, director of the new movie "The Kingdom" (partial filmed here in the UAE), which is due to open on the 11th, was interviewed on Hardball last Friday, and had a few comments about his experiences interacting with people in the UAE and Saudi Arabia:

I have met very few Saudis that have anything nice to say about any Iraqis. I haven‘t met anyone—there‘s so much competition in the Middle East...

The Kuwaitis don‘t like the Iraqis. The Saudis don‘t like the Iraqis. The UAE doesn‘t like anyone. Everyone hates Iran.

...people ask me, coming back from the Middle East, what—you know, what I observed and what—what my takeaway is, in terms of what—what can help. And—and the only thing that I consistently go back to is, by far, the—the country in the Middle East that seems to be functioning as peacefully as—as possible is the UAE.

It‘s cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where capitalism has taken ahold, and there‘s such investment and growth going on in those cities, that they police themselves. And I had dinner with Sheikh Mohammed of—of Dubai. And I asked him, you know, why there had been no attacks in his country, a country which has alcohol, which has a—women are allowed to wear bikinis, and there‘s a much more Western lifestyle.

And he just, quite simply, pointed to the Burj Hotel and said, we won‘t let it happen.

The whole transcript is here (you have to scroll down to after the commercial break) and the video is here.