Mortgaged to the House of Saud
By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
THE ONLY EVIDENCE you need that President Bush is losing the "war on
terror" is this: On Sunday, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia said
that relations with the United States "couldn't be better."
Tell that to the parents of those who have died in two wars defending
this corrupt spawning ground of violent extremism. Never mind the ugly
facts: We are deeply entwined with Saudi Arabia even though it shares
none of our values and supports our enemies.
Yet on Friday, Bush's father and Vice President [censored] Cheney made
another in a long line of obsequious American pilgrimages to Riyadh to
assure the Saudis that we continue to be grateful for the punishment
they dish out.
"The relationship has tremendously improved with the United States,"
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal told a news conference in Riyadh.
"With the government, of course, it is very harmonious, as it ever was.
Whether it has returned to the same level as it was before in terms of
public opinion [in both countries], that is debatable."
Well, score one for public opinion. It makes sense to distrust the
mercenary and distasteful alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
We protect the repressive kingdom that spawned Osama bin Laden, and
most of the 9/11 hijackers, in exchange for the Saudis keeping our
fecklessly oil-addicted country lubricated.
Yes, it has stuck deep in the craw of many of us Americans that after
9/11, Washington squandered global goodwill and a huge percentage of
our resources invading a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda,
while continuing to pander to this dysfunctional dynasty. After all,
Saudi Arabia is believed to have paid Bin Laden's murderous gang
millions in protection money in the years before 9/11, and it lavishly
funds extremist religious schools throughout the region that preach and
teach anti-Western jihad.
"Al Qaeda found fertile fundraising ground in the kingdom," noted the
9/11 commission report in one of its many careful understatements. The
fact is, without Saudi Arabia, there would be no Al Qaeda today.
Our president loves to use the word "evil" in his speeches, yet
throughout his life he and his family have had deep personal, political
and financial ties with a country that represents everything the
American Revolution stood against: tyranny, religious intolerance,
corrupt royalty and popular ignorance. This is a country where women
aren't allowed to drive and those who show "too much skin" can be
beaten in the street by officially sanctioned mobs of fanatics. A
medieval land where newspapers routinely publish the most outlandish
anti-Semitic rants. A place where executions are held in public,
torture is the norm in prison and the most extreme and expansionist
version of Islam is the state religion.
It's hard to see how Saddam Hussein's brutal and secular Iraq was worse
than the brutal theocracy run by the House of Saud. Yet one nation we
raze and the other we fete. Is it any wonder that much of the world
sees the United States as the planet's biggest hypocrite?
As insider books by former White House terrorism advisor Richard
Clarke, journalist Bob Woodward and others have recounted, punishing
Saudi Arabia in any way for its long ideological and financial support
of terrorism was not even on the table in the days after 9/11. Instead,
within hours of the planes hitting the towers, the powerful
neoconservatives in the White House rushed to use the tragedy as an
excuse for a long-dreamed invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile, after two wars to make the Middle East safe for the Saudis,
wars that cost hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands
of American lives, the price of oil is soaring - up 42% from just a
year ago. Good thing we just passed a pork-laden energy bill that will
do little to nothing to ease our crushing - and rising - dependence
on imported oil. Federal officials project that by 2025, the U.S. will
have to import 68% of its oil to meet demand, up from 58% today.
There are those who argue that the best rationale for invading Iraq was
to ease our dependence on Saudi Arabia's massive oil fields, which
might allow for a more rational or moral relationship. Yet the dark
irony is that with Iraq in chaos and its oil flow limited by insurgent
attacks and a bungled reconstruction, Saudi Arabia is now more
important to the United States than ever.
It's scary, but these gaping contradictions don't seem to trouble our
president a whit.
As the drumbeat of devastating terrorist attacks in Baghdad, London and
elsewhere continue, Bush prattles on - five times in a speech last
Wednesday - about his pyrrhic victories in the "war on terror." This
is a sorry rhetorical device that disguises the fact that the forces of
Islamic fanaticism in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world are
stronger than ever.
Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer9aug09,0,3079443.column