Posted on 11/16/2001 1:05:10 PM PST by veronica
Among Arizona´s Pueblo Indians, a woman could obtain a divorce simply by placing her husband´s moccasins outside the front door. If that method became just as practicable for nations, the United States would be today checking that its slippers are still under the bed it shares with Saudia Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Last week Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, in a bid to convince 150 prominent Saudis that the government is defending Muslim interests, warned that a divorce from the U.S. may well be in the offing. Reading from a letter sent to George W. Bush, he announced that their two nations are at a crossroads and that it may be time for each to look to their separate interests.
Separate interests? Now what would they be? An answer might be found by focusing on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban who shield him. The U.S. war against Afghanistan is as unpopular on the Saudi street as Bin Laden and his minions are admired. It is lost on no one that Bin Laden is a Saudi citizen and that, just as in almost every other hamlet, village and city throughout the Arab world, he is seen as a hero who has struck a decisive blow for Muslim honor. This pride of ownership may well have percolated up to the upper echelons of the Saudi royal household who regard the international renegade as one of their own.
On the other hand, it is certainly not news to the Saudi street that Bin Laden´s own manifesto has targeted the Saudi ruling elite. His characterization of them as corrupt sycophants who, he demands, must expel all foreign forces from the region, may well have hit a chord in the Saudi heartland. The threat of revolution must therefore be making the sleep of the Saudi royals a little more fitful these days. No wonder they have stymied U.S. investigations into the eight known Saudi citizen hijackers. No wonder the growing need to define Saudi goals as diverging from those of the United States.
Yet, neither of these reasons was employed by Abdallah to identify the Saudis´ ´separate interests´. Rather it was U.S. support for Israel that garnered the blame. This is a familiar trope of the Arab world - the attempt to deflect attention from its own corruption and ineptitude by identifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the ultimate cause of Arab rancor. That distant conflict, which had little to do with al-Qaeda´s motivation for the attacks on America, is so often used as a blind for Arab rejection of the West, that it has crumbled into parody. Palestinian suffering, apparently so deeply sensed by all Arab nations that not a finger has been lifted by them to relieve the misery of refugees living in squalid camps within their own borders, is rarely ever the true reason for Arab rejectionism. It is a convenient screen behind which to hide a glibly anti-Western agenda.
It is not, therefore, American support for Israel that causes consternation in the Arab world. It is what Israel and the U.S. represent. Democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and a free press are anathema to tribal elites and dictators who display the barest interest in the welfare of their own people. The United States´ allies in the Middle East are indistinguishable from the more extreme regimes in this regard. In fact states such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are so accustomed to their own designation as "moderate" that they expect their own records of repression and militarism to be cavalierly ignored.
There are no easy means of dealing with Arab nations ruled by such despotic regimes. In a tumultuous, uncertain world it may be better to deal with the devil you know than the one you don´t, but the potential defection of Saudi Arabia augurs a world that one day may be cracked in two - one side in support of democracy and freedom and the other violently opposed to it. In such an event, it might pay for the U.S. to be the first to seek divorce from its more capricious partners. Maybe it will put all the "moderate" states on notice at how much they have to lose when the moccasins are finally placed outside their own front doors.
It's not as though the war between the civilized world and the terrorist nations were unprecedented. There was Rome and Carthage.
great article! This is exactly right....and even Arafat scoffed when he was asked about bin ladin's intentional inclusion of the Palestinans in his recent propaganda video.
This is something the whining liberals in this country need to be reminded of every day.....the humanitarian disasters in Afghanastan et al are the product of these muslim extremists who are only interested in the POWER they yield.
These punks wouldn't own anything but sand if it wasn't for the US.
We should tell Sadam to go ahead and take them. Then we take Sadam and get reduced prices on oil.
I think that the US should impose large trade tariffs on nations such as Saudi Arabia that do not allow American style freedom of religion in their nations. When we buy their oil we enable them, we should not do that. We can be independent and strong if we desire to do so. We should not have troops in Saudi if they don't want them there either. Russia has lots of oil, so does Alaska, we can build nuclear plants if we desire. I say let the Europeans and Japanese buy their oil, but for us we should strike a different course and be true to our values.
I think they would be better off buying a large supply of NIKE sneakers, because as soon as war starts the Arabs start running. Do you have good sneakers?
Saudi Arabia has no history of being aggressive towards their neighbors in the region so they don't have to spend all their money on security.
I don't think they have any equivalent of counter-intelligence or spies or covert operations either.
There is a lot of noise about the Saudis funding the terrorists, but zero proof and an idiot would know their is NO BENEFIT to the Saudi people or the Al SAud to destroy a 60 year working relationship with America.
(Its too much to expect that you would use your head and contemplate both historical precidence and who actually benefits from 9-11 and what the goals were)
You are basing your KNOWLEDGE of what is in their textbooks on what a famous muckraker claims although he has NEVER been to Saudi Arabia and doesn't read Arabic.
Saudi Airforce pilots have been training in the US for 40 years and while they may not be as good as our pilots (who knows) their are decidely more that 400.
Islam is no more inherently evil than Christianity or Judiasm. There are evil people who USE religion to commit all manner of crimes against others as if somehow the superiority of their religion justifies breaking ALL the commandments from theft to murder to slander.
I could care less whether you eat your shoes or not.
Its a shame that racism and ignorance pass for Conservatism in 2001.
They have been around a long time and I bet you never heard of it until you got your shorts in a bunch over OBL's particular abuse of Wahabbi and half the dimwit media became 24 hour experts.
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