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Posted on 12/31/2003 9:34:20 AM PST by Sabertooth
The following forum was held at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture's annual Restoration Weekend, Nov. 13-16, 2003. David Keene: My name is Dave Keene, and those of you who know me know that I know very little about the Middle East, almost nothing about Shiites and Sunnis and Wahhabi Muslims. However, since September 11, like a lot of us, I’ve spent a good bit of my time reading and trying to learn something about this, and, of course, one of the most delicate issues that the current administration has been dealing with is the question of Saudi Arabia.
The topic of our panel today is, “Is Saudi Arabia a Friend?” And after recent news reports, I’m tempted to sum it up by saying, “No, they’re not our friend, but al-Qaeda is treating them as if they were.”
I’d suggested that the Saudi government works with us on important questions in that region of the world. There are many Saudi business interests in the United States. On the other hand, critics of the relationship with Saudi Arabia have pointed out that, in a sense, bombs don't kill people; ideas kill people. And if it’s the ideas that are of concern to us, many of those ideas in the current context are traceable almost directly to the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who many of us think made a devil’s bargain a long time ago for which the entire world -- including the Saudi monarchy itself -- is now paying a price.
I’d like to start with Tom Lippman, who is a journalist. Tom has covered the Middle East as Bureau Chief for the Washington Post in the ‘70s. He covered Desert Storm in the ‘90s, was the Post's Diplomatic and National Security Correspondent in this part of the world, and has written extensively on Middle East politics and concerns.
Following Tom, we have Jean AbiNader, who’s a co-founder of the Arab-American Institute, and who, in addition to his intellectual and political concerns in the area has been active in business, both here and in Middle East for many, many years.
And finally, Steve Emerson is a journalist and a true expert on extremist Islamists, particularly the activities of this wing of Islam in the United States. Steve has produced television documentaries, has a recent book on the subject, and perhaps more importantly is often consulted by law enforcement and other agencies that are interested about the threats that may come from terrorists within that portion of the Muslim community.
We’d like to start, though, with Tom Lippman. Tom is going to start by putting some of what we’re talking about into context.
Tom Lippman: Thanks very much. I very much appreciate your interest in what I consider to be a very important subject.
After spending much of my adult life in about, writing about, and talking about the issues in the Middle East, I’ve spent more or less all of the past two-plus years looking into the history and nature of the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Now, normal people would say in response to that, “Get a life,” but, in fact, I found it very interesting. I was writing a book, which is about to come out, and what I learned, what I want to emphasize to you all, is that the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has lasted longer, is much broader, and goes much deeper in any facet of life that is commonly understood.
And I guess most people think, and I understand why people think that, that it’s essentially a relationship that’s built on our guaranteed access to oil and their access to American security and weapons. But those are effects; they’re not causes. That is to say the original relationship predated the oil concession, and there’s many more aspects to it than that, some of which are economic.
So let me say that as far as I’ve been able to determine, the first Americans to spend any extended time in what is now Saudi Arabia, even before the Kingdom was officially created as we know it today in 1932 and before the oil concession in 1933, were missionary doctors from the Reform Church in America who established a missionary hospital in Bahrain at the end of the 19th century. As the word filtered across the narrow strait between Bahrain and the mainland, the people of the eastern part of Saudi Arabia, who had no access to any modern medical care, began to learn about the work of these doctors. And not to belabor this point, but as far as I can tell, the first American that the founding king ever met was a doctor from that hospital who went into Kuwait to treat some of the king’s soldiers who had been wounded in some skirmish among the tribes out there before Saudi Arabia was created. Eventually, these doctors were invited up to Riyadh and spent weeks at a time there treating the king, members of the royal family, and ordinary citizens for the chronic diseases that afflicted the population. They were not allowed to proselytize, nor were they allowed to establish a permanent presence, but the king understood perfectly well that they were Christians and what their purpose was in life.
The king was always fearful of the colonial aspirations of the European power. This was his introduction to Americans: American Christians, who went there and gave without asking anything in return. They gave without taking because they were doctors and nurses, and that was their mission. And in my view, that was part of the conditioning of the king’s mind that led him to select an American oil company rather than its British competitors for the original oil concession. He understood that the United States had no colonial ambitions, had no record as a colonial or occupying power in the Middle East, and negotiations were very intense. But this relationship came about through the early work of those doctors and through the personal diplomacy of an American named Charles Crane, who was the plumbing fixtures heir. Crane took his plumbing fixtures fortune and spent it bettering the lives of people in Saudi Arabia, and he established an early relationship with the king as part of that trust.
And so what happened after the oil concession was signed? The country was physically transformed, as you all know, in a single lifetime. It went from being a country that didn’t even have wind-up clocks and motorized transport or communications to a country that was fully technologically conversant with the modern world. And when you go back and look at the record, you see that the Saudi Arabia that exists today is in many ways a creature of Americans. That country is physically, and in some ways organizationally and economically, modeled on the United States because of the lessons they learned from Americans.
I have at home a silver Saudi one Real coin, which was minted in Philadelphia in 1944. We minted four million of them. And why were we minting Saudi coins in Philadelphia? Because in 1944, the Saudi government was broke. It was near starvation. The oil shipments had been cut off by the war, and the country’s principal source of income, which was a tax on pilgrims going to Mecca, was cut way down because during the war the pilgrims didn’t come. The country was destitute. And so we lent them silver, knowing that they would be good for it after the war, and we minted their coins.
Before that, there was no single nationwide currency and there was still no paper money. The United States sent over under Truman’s Point Four program, created the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, or Central Bank, which today is one of the great economic powerhouses of the world, and stabilized the currency. They used multiple currencies. You can’t value property when you have multiple coinage, as your currency and the value of silver and gold that fluctuates on the world market. You don’t know what property’s worth. It’s hard to collect taxes. You can’t conduct commerce when you’re doing things with gunnysacks for coins.
And so that, as far as I can tell, was the first direct intervention of people associated with or sent by the American government into building the modern Saudi state. And that was the first of many such steps.
I discovered, for example, the long history going back to the oil company of American involvement in the development of Saudi Arabian agriculture. The agricultural sector is the largest employer in Saudi Arabia today and the second-largest component of Saudi GDP. And the reason for that is that the Saudis learned modern agricultural techniques, including how to use incubators for chickens, from American farmers who went over there to work on the royal experimental farms and taught them to manage the farms and taught them agricultural techniques. It was also a product of the United States Geological Survey, which has had an outpost in Saudi Arabia since about 1945 and has done superhuman work in finding and capturing the very limited source of the water for irrigation in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Arabian airline is the largest in the Middle East by far. It was invented, created, staffed, managed, trained, and maintained by TWA for about 25 years. The pilots were Americans. The crew scheduler was an American. The fleet was American. From the time they got their first plane, which was a gift – a DC3 that FDR gave to the king in 1945 – that airline was totally operated by Americans, and the pilots were trained by Americans.
In the 1960s, the Ford Foundation had a team in Saudi Arabia throughout the 1960s trying to help the Saudis create what we call, using a pejorative term, a bureaucracy. As the Saudi state modernized and as money came in, they didn’t have the people we regard as civil servants, the people who issue permits, evaluate applications, put stamps on things, you know, make the trains run on time. The entire concept of public service really turns out to have been unfamiliar to the Saudis. The idea that you would extend yourself to perform a service for a total stranger, i.e., your countryman who you’ve never met, was foreign to them. They did that for their tribes and their families. They had to learn, had to be taught, how to do that in the abstract as a public service. The Ford Foundation did a lot of that in the 1960s with limited success. But the organizational chart of the Saudi government looked much different after 10 years of Ford’s work from what it did before the Ford people started.
And then, after the end of the oil embargo in 1974, we established the Joint Saudi-U.S. Economic Commission, which was run by the Treasury Department. That was set up by the Nixon administration just before Nixon’s resignation for the last great hurrah in that Middle East trip that Nixon made on his last foreign trip as president.
The United States government dispatched individual Americans to work in the Saudi ministries and show them how to do things like collect customs, to plan the faculty evaluation schemes in the universities. A team from the National Park Service created the first and still only national park in Saudi Arabia. All that was done on the American model because – and, by the way, all that was done for 20-some years with virtually no Congressional scrutiny – because the Saudis paid for it.
Since these people were seconded by the American government, all their salaries and accommodations were paid for by the Saudis, so in a sense, it wasn’t your money. Congress didn’t even look at it. So it happened almost out of our site. You were aware of it if you went to Saudi Arabia because the Treasury Department was in charge of this.
Furthermore, the great non-royal fortunes in Saudi Arabia, the fortunes of the merchant princes were largely made by the Saudis who obtained the franchises to distribute American products. These were mostly exclusive franchises. And when Saudi Arabia finally joins the WTO, this is going to be a big issue.
But the people who had the General Electric franchise, the General Motors franchise, the Procter and Gamble franchise, became immensely rich through their association with American consumer products, which were and remain in very high demand in Saudi Arabia. When you go into a Saudi Arabian supermarket, it looks like a Wal-Mart, both in the way it’s organized and the array of products that you see inside.
And then, of course, there was the security relationship about which much more has been written. The Saudi Arabian National Guard even now is trained by Americans, mostly from the Vinnell Corporation.
The result of all of this, if you look at the question that's in your program, ”Are the Saudis With Us?" the answer in my view is that an awful lot of them are, and they are because they have chosen the American model for the way in which they've built their country under our direct and indirect influence.
There's a reason why the electric current in Saudi Arabia is 110 volts, right? There's a reason why they drive on the right. There's a reason why the new buildings have wheelchair access ramps. They don't have them in London, but they have in Riyadh because they build to our standards. And a lot of Saudis have cast their lot with the American vision of what a modern country should look like.
Another large group of Saudis, maybe an equally large group, it's very hard to say, have opposed every step of this process and what they regard as infringement of Western techniques, culture, style, and attitudes into Saudi society. It's a bifurcated society. This no doubt seriously retrograde element in Saudi society regards all these influences as immoral, illegal and would like to purge their society of this, almost as if their vision of what a country should look like was that of the Taliban.
And most other people are in the middle. They want to go about their business and take their kids to the park and shop in the air-conditioned mall and eat at McDonald's and be left alone. I would say that as we think about how to deal with Saudi Arabia now, we ought not to deal with them in a way that turns off our own constituency, a strong element, an important element, in Saudi society, which includes royal family and all the economic interests, all the people who were educated in the United States, and who admire American society.
Some of the actions that we've taken since 9/11 have alienated those very people who are most important to us, and as we evaluate our own response to these incidents, we should keep that in mind. Thank you.
David Keene: Why don't we hear now from Steve Emerson, who is an expert on one of the groups perhaps that Tom was referring to in his discussion and move on from there. Steve?
Steve Emerson: In June of this year, one of the Saudis spokespersons gave an interview in the Saudi newspaper in which he was asked about the ties between various Saudi charities or religious endowments that were promoting or directly supporting al-Qaeda or Islamic terrorism. His response was that they were and are independent charities in the kingdom and they were as connected to the Saudi government as the United Way is connected to the U.S. government.
That was one of the most disingenuous statements he could have made because, in fact, the Saudi religious ministry has been used for years to fund and create these religious endowments. Some of them you may be aware of. One is called the Muslim World League. Another one is called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. Another one is called the International Islamic Relief Organization, all of which have been created and endowed with hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even more, used to funnel and support Islamic extremist movements around the world. I would suggest to you that the use of these endowments and the promotion of Wahhabism, Saudi extremism, Islamic fundamentalism is intrinsic to the identity of the Saudi kingdom.
Now, I fully admit that it's very difficult to always assign an identity to one regime. There are competing forces within the Saudi regime, some of whom have indeed expressed some pro-Western sentiments. However, for the regime to survive and for the family to survive, the large consensus has revolved around the need and the willingness to support Islamic extremism and terrorism around the world.
It doesn't always mean a linear type of equation where monies directly go into the hands of al-Qaeda. Generally speaking, al-Qaeda or other Islamic terrorist groups are the culmination of a vast process of recruitment, indoctrination, incitement, cultivation, training and propaganda, much of which is legal or, in the case of Islamic extremism, focuses on religious components designed to bring and elicit those that ultimately carry out terrorist attacks.
It is almost daily that one can hear broadcasts in Saudi Arabia, even after the most recent attacks last week, still calling for jihad against the infidels. Islamic schools in Saudi Arabia to this day still teach the need to confront the infidel; talking about the need to confront Christians and Jews. This is ultimately consistent and directly representative of the Wahhabist doctrine.
Again, it does not mean that everybody in the regime necessarily adheres to this, but when I see public opinion polls, as I saw in December of 2001, suggesting that up to 70 or 80 percent of young Saudis between the ages of 21 and 45 believe that bin Laden didn't carry out the attacks, it suggests to me that there is a radicalism that's pervasive. That radicalism has been exported, has been deeply implanted tragically into the heart, not just of surrounding regimes and other places in the Middle East but used directly to create terrorist networks. In the United States, Saudi companies, some directly related to the regime itself and whose names have not been disclosed but who were listed in the 28 pages that were redacted earlier this year when the 9/11 Commission Report, were used to employ actual members of the 9/11 conspiracy.
Similarly last year, there were federal search warrants served on a series of Saudi-run companies in northern Virginia. It's known as the Herndon Charities Probe. It was one of the largest post-9/11 investigations carried out into terrorist financing. The affidavits used to support the search clearly stated connections between Saudi Arabia and the entire network of scores, if not hundreds, of entities in the United States in a complex labyrinth designed for only one purpose: to launder money. No evidence yet has been produced that would convict anyone because there's been only a couple of trials.
But, in fact, the reality is that these groups, IIIT, International Islamic Thought, was used to support Islamic extremist groups, one of which is now known. It was the Islamic Jihad Organization in Tampa, Florida. Monies directly went into the coffers of the group in Florida to create a secret Islamic Jihad façade, hidden under the protection of serving as a non-profit charity, as an adjunct to the University of South Florida, and as a religious school.
The indictment of Sami al-Arian in February of this year for supporting a 17-year conspiracy to coordinate attacks from the United States and to operate the Islamic Jihad secretly from Tampa clearly showed the central role that the IIIT and other conduits from Saudi Arabia played in the operation of this group.
Now, one might say, well, these are independent companies or independent entities. I think in Saudi Arabia it's very difficult to make that distinction as we would make in the United States, which is why the comment that somehow these religious endowments are thoroughly independent of the Saudi regime is absolutely false.
The question becomes where the Saudi member royal family ends and independent businessmen begin. The finances of "independent businessmen" are thoroughly tied to the regime and to the family itself. There is no such thing as an independent entity in the way we know it in the United States, independent, that is, of connections with the government or independent of connections with the royal family.
Even in the United States today, there's a split. I fully admit this. I know that, for example, after the attacks at Riyadh this year, the Saudi government said, "We've got a problem," and they announced there was a crackdown. In fact, there has been some effort to root out the al-Qaeda networks in Saudi Arabia, and there was greater cooperation given to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies than ever before. The only question that remained was whether this cooperation would be extended beyond the kingdom and whether, in fact, the kingdom would shut down the charities whose endowments have hundreds of millions of dollars in the pipeline and are still used to promoted incitement, spread Wahhabism, and to continue exhortations against Christian, Jews, and other "infidels."
In the United States today, for example, the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., continues to this very day disseminating textbooks published in Saudi Arabia, textbooks that are distributed to various Islamic schools in the United States, which openly call for jihad against the Christians and Jews. You can see these textbooks taught in sixth grade, ninth grade, and twelfth grade. I can't tell you the number of schools that receive them, but we do know that the textbooks were disseminated earlier this year and were used for this year's school program.
One of the problems that now exists is that the Saudis haveis that the monies that have been used to promote Islamic extremism have now gone so far into the pipeline that even if Saudi Arabia wanted to pull back the money, which it doesn't, it would be impossible to do.
In the United States, Saudi-run or Saudi-funded institutions, consistent with the philosophy of Saudi extremism, have emerged in the form of various "mainstream groups," such as the Islamic Society of North America, the American Muslim Council, and other groups that pretend to be moderate but, in fact, are anything but.
In one of the most important indictments and disclosures since 9/11, Mr.Abdurahman Alamoudi, head of the American Muslim Council until year 2000 and was head of the American Muslim Foundation, a spin-off group, was arrested coming back into the United States. He has been subsequently charged with violating the Libyan Sanctions Act, and evidence released recently in affidavit shows that his role in personally receiving millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and then sending out the money into radical Islamic groups linked to al-Qaeda and Hamas since 1996. Mr. Alamoudi's organization, the American Muslim Council, was funded and has been sponsored largely with monies coming from Saudi Arabian businessmen and other endowments, some of which have been disclosed; others are still unknown to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The question is, are they for us or are they against us? Are they on our side or not on our side? There's no doubt there's a convergence of interests. There's no doubt that as Tom just pointed out there has been a convergence of interest with technology, with the issue of oil production. Aramco helped nurture the whole Saudi royal family. They were really the paternal protectors of the Saudi family. Aramco developed the kingdom. But the end was a direct interest for oil, in exchange for which there was a protection-defensive umbrella provided to the Saudi kingdom.
In 1973, when the oil revolution or embargo was initiated and there was a 400-percent increase in the price of oil, it only took a number of years before we saw the Iranian revolution and then the Sadat association and the whole arc of crisis of Islamic terrorism engulfing the Middle East.
I would say to you that the modern rise of Islamic extremist movements around the world, first manifesting themselves in the early 1980s and then escalating with the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and then the emergence of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, all the other groups coming from the Muslim brotherhood were all spawned and promoted by Saudi monies.
The question today is whether Saudi Arabia is on our side or not. I would suggest to you that the fundamental identity of the Saudi regime, the notion of a Wahhabist type of protectorate of the Islamic holy places, is still thoroughly inconsistent with the ideals of Western pluralism and the notions of protecting American interests. Perhaps that will change. I don't necessarily see it because I think there's a fundamental contradiction in the regime. So today there really is a schizophrenic reaction from the regime itself. Yes, on certain matters, there has been cooperation. Yes, they've invested in Treasury bills. Yes, they have swing capacity and have produced more oil when we've asked them. Yes, they've produced oil consistent with our energy needs. And on the other hand, we turned a blind eye for many years to the export of a theocratic militant ideology that went into Southeast Asia throughout the Middle East, went into the madrassas in Europe, and, I dare say, into some of the Islamic schools in the United States, as well as Islamic organizations.
The question now is whether Saudi Arabia regime and the leaders will make the right choice in pulling back and disavowing, discrediting, delegitimizing, and arresting or detaining those that had been directly involved in promoting Islamic terrorism and Islamic extremism. It's not always a function of legalities here. Often, the Saudi government says, "Give us the proof, and we'll make the arrests." And as you know, in the world of intelligence, there isn't necessarily a smoking gun that can be produced and given to another regime in order for them to make the arrest. But U.S. intelligence has clearly identified major Islamic extremist businessmen worth hundreds of millions of dollars, freely operating in Saudi Arabia, continuing to support al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic movements that have not been reigned in, have not been stopped, have not had their accounts closed down, have not had their assets seized. They are continuing to operate business as usual in spite of U.S. information given to the Saudis that these businessmen and their organizations have been directly tied to the promotion and export of Islamic terrorism.
So in the end, the question remains whether they are for us or against us, whether they are on our side or against us. In certain respects, they can be considered on our side, but in the larger strategic doctrine of protecting U.S. interests, of promoting pluralism, of ensuring that American allies are not subject to attacks from al-Qaeda or Hamas, and are not incited -- and that extremists are not incited in other parts of the Middle East -- Saudi Arabia has failed to deliver the goods to the United States despite statements and promises made to the contrary. The Saudi regime continues to allow the export, the promotion, and the development of Islamic extremism beyond its borders. It may be trying to contain al-Qaeda right now, and that's a direct self-interest, and if it can be extended beyond al-Qaeda, then we'll be able to determine whether or not they are for us or against us.
I know that's a simple equation, but the President was right on message when he delivered that statement after 9/11, in which he said, "You are either for the terrorists, or you're against us. You have to make a decision." The Saudi regime has tried to placate all factions, and I have no doubt that some members of the royal family are thoroughly dedicated to promoting a Western vision and are allied ideologically with the United States.
Just the same, there are more and others that are allowed, and indeed emboldened, to carry out the promotion of Islamic extremism because there have been no brakes institutionally put on them because the regime itself is fundamentally unable to stop those extremists from operating. So in the end, it's a schizophrenic policy, but in large part, still one that supports the antithesis of American pluralism and American security. Thank you.
David Keene: I'd like Jean AbiNaderto talk now, but I did note one thing. Steve talked about the danger from extremist Islamists to their professed enemies, Christians and Jews, but they've killed a lot more Muslims over the years than Christians and Jews. And this strain of extremism is not simply a threat to external enemies from the region. It has historically been a threat to anybody who has disagreed with them within the region. And a lot of people who have watched this area have suggested that one of the reasons that those who are more friendly to pluralistic society and more friendly to the United States have not been able to be heard is precisely because of the fear of these sorts of folks. So it isn't as if they live in a region in which everybody loves them and they've targeted us as the enemy. They've targeted everyone who disagrees with them within Saudi Arabia and within the region, indeed the world, that they're in.
Jean AbiNader: I was born in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, 56 years ago. I never thought that I'd end up being kind of a poster boy for terrorism in this country. And I think there were a lot of very useful and good things said this morning and helpful things, and I want to key on some of them, but first I think I have to say out of that perspective of having been born in this country from immigrant parents that I really want to thank David for all the great work he's been doing on civil liberties this past year. I think it's really critical that we understand that this War on Terrorism is a war that's being fought both overseas and domestically, and the domestic component of that has to really work within the context of the Constitution, so I'm really proud to be on the same platform with him.
And while some people fight terrorism here at home, I work a lot with American agencies that are fighting terrorism abroad. I've recently just finished working with the Justice Department on a team of investigators who are going to Saudi Arabia to work on these very charities that Steve talked about. And I think that I am concerned about a couple remarks that were made: Dave's early remark that killers are traceable to Saudi Arabia, and Steve's remark that extremism is intrinsic to the identity of the Saudi kingdom.
I find any conspiracies hard to conceptualize in my own mind, because it's taking dots from here and there and trying to connect them all. And if that were the case, then it would be very hard for me to accept being a Roman Catholic, which I am, because of all the conspiracy theories about the Roman Catholic church over the years and how the Pope did this and how the cardinals did this, and we know what the priests are doing here and how this is all going to the ruin of Western civilization.
I think, more importantly, I think, Steve, the point that you made and the point that former Director of the CIA James Woolsey made this morning is how do we bring the Saudis to the right choice. So for me the question is one of engagement or disengagement with the Saudis. The Saudis are there, and we're going to continue to be dependent on oil, period. It doesn't matter whether it comes from the Middle East or anywhere else.
If you look at the spike in prices that happened in August, it wasn't because of Saudis or OPEC or anybody else; it's because of Venezuela and Nigeria and the problems they were having there. I think it's kind of false to try to talk about the fact that we should be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. I think the reality is what we want to do is create dependable sources of oil, and the way you do that is by creating relationships with regimes and relationships with people in those regimes that support American interests broadly.
And so I want to specifically talk to Director Woolsey's comments about building on the cultures and traditions that are there because unlike most of you, I have been and spent most of my adult life working in and out of the Middle East. My first trip there was in 1971 to visit my family in Lebanon. And my first work in Saudi Arabia began in 1976, when I helped them design and build the first electronic telephone system in Saudi Arabia. I've worked for most American defense contractors there. I've trained thousands of Saudis. I've trained thousands of Iranians in '78 and '79.
And I’m a Christian Arab, so if you want to talk about pluralism and minorities, come talk to me. More Christians were killed by Christians in Lebanon than by Muslims, so I reject conspiracy theories. But I do see interlocking interests that we have to break if we're going to have progress in terms of achieving the American vision of stability, peace, and prosperity in our relations with Arab countries. This can only come about from my experience of more than 30 years in the region, through engagement, not disengagement.
You know, the old expression, "As you reap, so shall you sow." Are we still apologizing for Marcos and Noriega? No. Saudis are now getting payback for what they have done in the past 20 years. Now, why did they do it? Why did they embark on this kind of crusade of extending their brand of extremist identity of Islam around the world?
The Saudis are a very insular people traditionally. They were never colonized, as most Arab countries were, from the 18th and 19th and 20th century. The heartland around Riyadh resisted efforts by the Turks, by the Brits, by anyone to overcome that region. There's a real xenophobia that was part of the tribal culture there. And so when the Grand Mosque was attacked in Mecca in the mid-'70s and Khomeini came into power in '79 in Iran, he challenged the Saudis. He said, "You're not good Muslims. You don't deserve to be the keepers of the two mosques in Mecca and Medina, because of your alliance with the West."
The attack on the Grand Mosque, in addition to the bargain, Steve, they made with the Wahhabis in terms of education ministries and justice ministries, was the real impetus behind Saudi Arabia, allowing and abetting this proclaiming of their brand of Islam throughout the Arab and Muslim countries. It was certainly a strategic error on their part, but I think it came from a lack of sophistication. But it also came from a deep-seated inability and lack of comprehension of how to deal with the larger world, and that is something now, after three generations of Western education, they're finally accumulating. It's those people that Tom spoke about that we really have to support and we have to make our allegiances with.
But the problem is for me looking at the Middle East and American history in general is our foreign policy in some ways is held captive to these two-year cycles of Congressional elections. And as Director Woolsey said this morning, what we need is vision. And he said very clearly, "Vision for the coming decades." He didn't say in the 2004 elections. He didn't say by 2008, because these cultures have existed for hundreds and thousands of years, and we're going in there and trying to identify what it is in those cultures that we share with them that we can then build pluralistic values on. This is not something that's going to happen under the Bush administration, per se.
But there is danger in a fluctuating foreign policy tied to the political cycle. After all, what good is starting pro-democracy movements all through the world and then two years later cutting the funding out from under them? What good is starting women empowerment moves where we're helping women finance their own businesses so that can create jobs in their own countries and have independence if we don't fund those programs? If every two years Congress decides, "Well, we don't need this program," or the administration decides, "Well, this flavor of the month is Africa"? You can't create foreign policy without strategic vision, and yet that's the way we implement foreign policy because of the way we tie it to the Congressional election.
These are issues beyond ideology. Ideologies shift with whoever the majority and the minority is. It's a function, as the President said, of values. It's a function of values that endure and support policies over time that reflect the sense of our vision of the future and a commitment to policies that achieve that vision.
What do we need to do with Saudi Arabia? Well, unbeknownst to most Americans, because I think to discuss it publicly would be a mistake, we've been working with Saudis for over a year now, changing their curriculum. It's very clear that their curriculum doesn't serve the needs of their people, but most importantly, not because of stereotypes that people say, "Well, it says killing the infidels." More importantly, because it doesn't train Saudis for the global workforce. It doesn't train them to accumulate wealth, important wealth that was talked about earlier today, a sense of belonging of what I achieve. So what we're really facing in Saudi Arabia is moving a country based on 14th and 15th and 12th century values into the 21st century.
What is it in that culture that we can work with? Well, we can work with a lot of things. One is they have a very high premium, just like most immigrants do, on education. And despite things that were said this morning, in fact, the oil countries in the Arab world have the highest literacy rates for women of all the Arab countries because they're the ones that provide free education. They're the ones that provide mandatory education through at least ninth grade. So you'll find, for example, if you go and look at the pharmacies in Saudi Arabia, 98 percent of all pharmacy graduates are women, 70 percent of all people in the schools who teach are women, 35 percent of all government employees in Saudi Arabia are women. It's not whether or not women can read in Saudi Arabia, or as Lynne Cheney says, "You're oppressed because you can't drive a car"; what oppresses women in Saudi Arabia is the inability to control themselves, their lives, economically, the inability to let their daughters go to school outside of Saudi Arabia, the inability to go to the airport and leave the country without having a male relative take you to the airport and receive you when you come back. That's oppression.
As we know from our own experience in this country with minorities, oppression is also a mental and psychological relationship to the governed. In my office at the Arab-American Institute, I have two documents sitting behind my desk, five-foot copies so you can't miss them, one of the Constitution and one of the Bill of Rights. If you talk to people in the Arab world, they're not interested in the Constitution, which essentially defines elections, and who can run for office. They're interested in the Bill of Rights, and that's where we've got to connect with the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Algerians: on the Bill of Rights, on the freedom of association, on the free press, on freedom of religion, respect for minorities, on this issue of pluralism. Believe me, when you have 50 percent or more people in those countries under the age of 18, they want freedom. They want economic opportunity. They don't want to worry about picking up AK-47s and shooting at Christians and Jews. Believe me, I've trained thousands of them. They want what every other person in the world wants, and that is economic freedom, freedom of association, the ability to study and have -- study in school, things that will help you have a career. They want to be able to know that they have the independence within their own society to be able to move from one area to another.
And so the Saudis have gotten some severe wake-up calls in the last couple months, but these wake-up calls have been coming for years. And so the question is what can we do publicly and privately to encourage Crown Prince Abdullah, who 10 years ago no one would have ever said was the chief reformer in Saudi Arabia, but what can we do to work with him to leverage against that large population of the country that is still rooted in the 14th century that Tom talked about?
In all of our experiences, whether it was in Kuwait for the elections in Parliament or in Saudi Arabia or Morocco, where I've worked with all the democracy projects that are going on out there, our biggest opposition was not the government to reform; it's the people themselves, the traditional cultures. They don't want women to have mobility. They don't want children to be able to leave home at 18 and go to universities abroad. They don't want to have private ownership of land that somehow allows people to create wealth outside of the tribe or outside of the community. These are the long-term values that we have to work on, but to me, it's a values issue. It's an issue of how we understand how American values connect with other people's values. It's not saying become Americans; it's saying look for those things in your own culture and your own traditions that help you aspire to where you want to be 10 years and 20 years from now. All of us as parents look out for our children. Do you think it's any different for them? Do you really think it's any different for them? Do you think Saudi Arabians wake up in the morning figuring out, "How am I going to hate the United States today?" We've done polling in Saudi Arabia, lots of it, over the past two years since they allowed us to start polling in Saudi Arabia, and what we've found is that 78 percent of Saudis started their days thinking about the quality of their work, their jobs. Second, they think about is their families. The third thing they think about is their religion. You know what? That almost tracks within two to three points with Americans. We can connect with these people, but we've got to connect with them at a lot of different levels, not just go to the princes and talk to the princes but talk to the people.
Where are the Americans? I'm working, for example, with the U.S. Army now trying to recruit Arabic linguists. Where are the Americans who speak Arabic? Where are the Americans who were doing Fulbright scholarship studies in places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, places where we need to have more encouragement? Why aren't we bringing more and more people from the Arab and Islamic worlds if they're important to us to study here in the United States? Why is it that we're down from 15,000 scholarships to 900 in this country now in terms of public diplomacy?
If we're going to be the world leader, we've got to show them the world through our eyes, not through the end of a gun. I think we can do a lot with Saudi Arabia, but it really takes a commitment, as the director said, over decades, and it takes a commitment to build on their culture and their traditions, and, therefore, it means understanding their culture and traditions the same way we want them to understand our culture and traditions. When we connect on values, we connect people to people, we can make a difference, and that's the best way for regime change to happen because that way it will endure. Thank you.
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