Our enemies the Saudis

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family.

The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provide–as almost every other country has–manifests of plane passengers flying to the United States.

Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

Far from aiding our efforts against terrorism, the Saudis have worked against them–to protect the terrorists in their own ranks. Also, the Saudis have praised suicide bombings and raised money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Government-controlled Saudi media have frequently spread the vilest kinds of anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda.

Such has been the behavior of those the State Department has long referred to as "our friends the Saudis." It would be more accurate to call them our enemies the Saudis.

Freedoms? Zero for seven. The Saudis run a totalitarian society. Not one of the seven freedoms identified by President Bush in his State of the Union speech–the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious tolerance–is honored by the Saudis.

There is no free speech and no freedom of religion (during the Gulf War the Saudis did not allow President Bush to conduct a religious service on Saudi soil), and women are restricted and physically assaulted by religious police who prowl the streets (and, by some accounts, would not allow teenage girls to leave a burning school, lest they not be properly clad; 15 girls died).

But the Saudis are not content to run a totalitarian society at home; they are trying to export their totalitarian Wahhabi Islam around the world. Since the Gulf War, the Saudis have financed Wahhabi clerics and Wahhabi-run mosques and schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Western Europe, and the United States.

The results can be seen on the Edgware Road in London or Leesburg Pike in Northern Virginia: Journalists have no trouble finding young people spouting the most vituperative anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda and swearing that they would fight for Islam against the United States. The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force.

So why do some still call the Saudis our friends? Because they have the power to keep oil prices down? That leverage is being reduced by increased oil production by our friends Russia and Mexico. Because they are anti-Communist? Communism is no longer a threat. Because they are used to heeding the mellifluous advice of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar? What has he done to stop al Qaeda or the propagation of totalitarian Wahhabi Islam? Because we depend on Saudi military bases? Despite Pentagon denials, it seems we are wisely dispersing our forces in the gulf.

It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers.

The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera.

President Bush has said that we must have regime change in Iraq to be safe from terrorism. It is increasingly clear that we must have regime change in Saudi-ruled Arabia as well.

The Abu Sayyaf took its name from Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan intellectual, who had preached an ultra-conservative Islamic ideology called Wahabi.

This is quite correct - but there is a little more to the story. The Wahabi are Saudi, in fact, were responsible for the accession to power of King Saud in the early part of the last century. It really does come back to them, like it or not. They still control the madrasas just as they did 100 years ago, and are still using that control to foment political and cultural recidivism.

It is doubly ironic that the imperial power the Wahabi used to rail at, Great Britain, was responsible in large part for their current position. We have taken the place of Britain in Wahabi demonology as the representatives of a culture that most threatens the control of the religious conservatives. We are a necessary external enemy, and nothing more.

"...It really does come back to them, like it or not. ...

I don't know where you would get the idea that I wouldn't like it. Gee, I'd love it if we could pin it on the Saudis--and all the other fanatical mullahs, abdullahs and inmams. Perfect bad guys, if you ask me--straight out of central casting. But somebody, somewhere doesn't see it that way do they?

It's statements like this:

"...We are a necessary external enemy, and nothing more..."

---that make me think you are not being quite serious. I don't wish to sound rude, but wasn't it OUR Leader who got the wheels turning on The Axis of Evil? And axis, which rather pointedly does not include the Saudis. Is that all we really are--an external enemy, nothing more? Is that why we fought a gargantuan land engagement against Iraq a few years ago and continue to sanction and harrass that regime? Is that why we have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia?

There's something wrong with the picture. Technical difficulties, perhaps....

The western allies, by bringing about the exile of the ruling houses of Germany and Austria-Hungary accomplished what they set out to do, which is to destroy the old order and hinder the creation of a restorationist movement. Whether or not this was evil is not the issue. Whether it worked is the question, and it most certainly did. That the cure proved worse than the "disease" is poetic justice, but not necessarily relevant to my proposed solution to the Islamic Question. The comparative success of Ataturk's secularisation of Turkey demonstrates that it is entirely feasible to eliminate the political influence of fundamentalist Moslem clerics. To do this will require some degree of violence, just as it did in Turkey. Of course, "the West" is not willing to tolerate this, so my suggestion is purely academic.

As far as the CIA being responsible for arming and training the mujahadeen, that is hardly new news. Our foreign policy has been a disaster at least since the war against Spain. One consistent thing is that we either back the wrong people, or back the right people the wrong way. Considering the American propensity for siding with the Moslems, our continued support of Israel is a mystery to me.

"Technical difficulties" is right - third try, let's see if this one actually posts...

I actually was serious about the "external enemy" comment, and in this context - the Wahabi have found such to be useful after the classic manner of propaganda, beginning with the Ottoman Turks prior to 1917, when the latter were the official government and had been for four centuries. Since the British were in part responsible for the accession of their clients the clan of Saud, after 1917, the Brits were never (despite the Balfour declaration identifying Palestine with the Jews) a proper focus for extranational hostility. In 1948 that changed more toward the direction of the U.S., of course, but at that point there were as yet no potentially embarrassing questions to be answered by a non-Saud majority population.

That's no longer the case. After a half-century of very high-profile gathering of oil wealth the ruling elite is faced with explaining (1) why that wealth has not served to alleviate Palestinian poverty, (2) why there are still "refugees," that is, why the Saudi government has not allowed Palestinian immigration, (3) why the guarantee of employment to all Saudi citizens now has a waiting list several years long, (4) why the per capita income of the Saudi people has fallen disproportionate to the levelling-off of oil prices. In short, why their rule has not worked out better for the ruled.

In addition, the U.S. represents the focus of a cultural threat: secular, individualistic, with universal adult suffrage and vigorous growth in technology, especially communications technology. It is that last that the Wahabi once employed to their advantage; it is the cornerstone of their power, and it is as much the existence of the U.S. as any of the U.S.'s actions that constitutes a threat to that. Because of the above questions I suggest that the Saudis will eventually be vulnerable to a popular revolution of some sort, with Wahabi support that popular revolution will not be religious in origin, and must look externally for secular inspiration - that's us. Certainly the actions of the Saudis in regards to support of the Wahabi educational system, the madrasa, suggest that they feel that way. All IMHO and subject to debate, of course...

I'm sorry for the delay in replying. I had to trot out to the Army/Navy store and buy a gas mask. I was wandering innocently around FreeRepublic today when a horrible stink bomb went off on one of the threads. Now...what were you saying?

Oh yes--something about the Jews. I admit the Jews do not loom large in my schemes, dreams and conspiracy theories --either as heros or villians. I find myself a little more transfixed by the behavior of the people who, in another era of American history might have been called "protestants" or "wasps" or just plain "christians".

I think of a President in his socks insisting that Islam means peace--looking shorter than one would expect and uncomfortable in his suit. I noticed that about Clinton too. He always looked as though he was a mechanical man wearing a suit for the first time. Remember how bloated he looked and how stiffly he held his arms, when he stood between the two Holy Land contestants as they shook hands? Baby-boomer Presidents don't look comfortable in their bodies for some reason.

I think of pictures we've all seen of toothy Jimmy Carter standing between his Holy Land contemporaries as they shook hands. While he was negotiating peace in the Middle East round the clock Paul Volker raised the interests rate which started that dreadful cleansing of the last of the family farmers in America. They say as many as 40,000 men died earlier than expected from heart attacks, gun shot wounds, strokes, depression, a few from self-starvation and broken hearts. Families were destroyed. I read a book which did a fair job of tracing the birth of some of the modern so-called "far right" extremist movements in flyover country to that forgotten step in the march of progress.

In the county where I live there are huge, beautiful federal-style houses literally crumbling. Trailer parks are popping up because all the manly "muscle jobs"--that used to be called "good" jobs, are just disappearing and white working people can't afford the kind of housing their parents took for granted.

Americans are proud of their freedom and the fact that although they pay 50% in taxes they are not socialistic--as demonstrated by the fact that none of the trailer-park people have private health insurance. We seem to take a perverse sort of pride also in the fact that although we've "invested" trillions of dollars in the largest defense entity ever conceived by the mind of man--14 times bigger than the rest of the word combined I think I read--- it cannot protect us from from enemy attack; it will not secure the geographic border; but it can protect Al Quaeda operatives in Bosnia and Kosovo from Serbs; and Saudi Arabians from Iraquis; and Afghan women from Afghan men.

It may irritate me that once-and-future Prime Minister Netanyahu can be treated by our Congress like pre-pubescent hispanic girls used to treat Menudo. At least Netanyahu knows who he represents and is fighting for that constituency all the time. I compare that with our Senators, for example, who sat like bashful schoolboys as Mr. Tenet wagged his finger in their faces and cautioned them against thinking impure thoughts about the performance of the CIA leading up to September 11th. President Bush said he had the highest confindence in Tenet and said America should do the same.

I guess that's why he sent Tenet to the Holy Land to consult with the people there...

"...Whether it worked is the question...

OK--as long as we grant our enemy his utilitarian calculations then, and stop all this nonsense about "good" and "evil"; "freedom" and "terrorism"; and the "clash of civilizations". Osama made his mistake in trusting the reliability of his sources--images of American pop culture, the behavior of corporations and politicians. Mistake number two was projecting his own prejudices and beliefs onto the innacurate data--much as you are doing by predicting the reaction of the "arabonthestreet" once he has been "liberated" from his ranting mullahs.

Just bad business practices, that's all it amounts to on either side. Each side will go back to the drawing board and return to the bargaining table with a new proposal. Osama--or whatever the negotiator on the other side might be calling himself--may be more inclined now to see the virtue of the "top down" approach which you describe. Given the state of our political, cultural and religious leadership I think he could work quite a few concessions into the bargaining process...

Some might argue that the US government has accessed the lives, honor and fortunes of American citizens since early in the Twentieth century with the help of the classic "external enemy" ploy. I appreciate your obviously more sophisticated knowledge of the workings and history of wahabism. It's reassuring to know that somebody is keeping track of all these exotic allies of ours--Bush called them that ("allies", I mean) in his address before Congress after the Twin Towers disaster, you will recall.

I remember also that a great many experts on Talibanism were abroad on the internet just a few short months ago when the plight of Afghan women was all the rage. And only a few short years before that a different President was calling them allies--and "freedom fighters" to boot!

Well, we have secured access to Victoria's Secret for each and every Afghan woman who so desires it. Now, onwards and downwards to the breasts of the Arabian peninsula.

How fortunate that all these oppressive regimes in need of democratic uplift should happen to be in such close proximity to the black milk of human progress....

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