Posted on 04/30/2003 8:30:05 PM PDT by Pokey78
You won't find the newly published Hatred's Kingdom in Saudi Arabian bookshops, but it is so much in demand among Saudi high officials that the government has brought out a reprint of its own. Its author, Dore Gold, is a hardline Israeli spokesman. He argues that the "hatred" referred to in the title is rooted in Saudi Arabia's austere brand of Islamic orthodoxy, Wahhabism, which found its most horrific climax in the atrocities of September 11.
The book has further fuelled a Saudi obsession and Arab guessing game known as "who is next?" The next candidate, that is, for the "reform" or "regime change" the Bush administration's neo-conservative hawks - in their drive to reshape the Middle East - will demand now that Saddam Hussein is ousted.
Syria and Iran are likelier targets for the hawks. But the Saudis see good reasons why they too might be targeted. Chief among these is the Israeli factor - their conviction that, for the Bush hawks, a rightwing Israeli agenda is built in to the American one.
"As America's key ally", said Crown Prince Abdullah bin Faisal, "we were Israel's only serious Arab competitor on Palestine's behalf for the ear of American administrations. September 11 gave them the opportunity to break that - to portray us as the kernel of evil and fount of terror."
On Tuesday, the US announced that all but a handful of its troops would be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, in a dramatic reshaping of its presence in the Gulf region. A withdrawal from the kingdom has long been one of the key demands of Osama bin Laden, but the Pentagon is following its own post-Iraq strategy. It is hard to gauge the eventual impact of the US decision; the only certainty is that it highlights how critical, for the House of Saud's future, the Saudi rulers deem the nature of their links with America to be.
They have long been caught between a dependence on the US and a deeply anti-American Saudi public. The Iraq war brought this contradiction to a head.
While both rulers and ruled share the same fear of what the US might have in store for them, the rulers' response to the war was profoundly - dangerously - different from what mass of Saudis would have liked. The regime sought, as far as it dared, to assist Washington. It did not permit US aircraft to use the key Prince Sultan airbase near Riyadh for combat missions, but the command and control centre there effectively directed the air war. It was the culmination of the deference which Saudi Arabia has shown towards the US since September 11, submitting to pressures for "cultural" reform in such sensitive areas as "hate-breeding" religious textbooks, or urging more tolerance from a ferociously orthodox clergy.
With the war over and the hated Saddam gone, the House of Saud clearly decided the time was ripe to conciliate its own public - and in conditions which do not further antagonise Washington. It feared a continued US presence would become a growing source of trouble.
Suzerainty
For the Saudis fear that what comes after the war could be as bad as the war itself - that the more blatantly exploitative and colonial the American suzerainty over Iraq turns out to be, the more the Iraqis will seek to liberate themselves from their "liberators". "I fear a far graver Arab Afghanistan ahead, and ourselves right next to it," an economist, Abdul Aziz Dakheel, said. A regime that sided with a US occupier in conflict with an Iraq without Saddam would be very unpopular.
Popular solidarity with Iraq could well take a violent, religious form. Bin Ladenist sentiment has declined since September 11, but the war gave it a new lease of life. "From the militant Islamists' standpoint, it is time for jihad against the infidel aggressor," said Abdul Aziz Qasim, a lawyer close to the militants.
"All depends on how the Iraqi situation evolves," said another Islamist, Muhsin Awaji. "The extremists are a volcano ready to erupt, and I fear they will target any westerners." And they would send guerrillas into Iraq itself.
Any such jihad would, in effect, be aimed at the Saudi government. For it is not just religious fanaticism and anti-Americanism that wins al-Qaida-style militants' sympathy among a wider public that would otherwise oppose their violence. It is a generalised discontent with the government. "As well as being a continuous source of anger at the west, Palestine was always a symptom of the Arabs' frustration with their own systems - and now you have Iraq added to that," said a western diplomat.
By getting rid of US forces, al-Qaida's key demand - the Saudi regime is stealing some of its thunder.
Yet, bases or no bases, the regime's central dilemma will endure so long as Palestinian and Iraqi miseries do. And with them, Arab hatred of America.
The dilemma for the House of Saud is that jihadist militancy is doctrinally justified by the self-same Wahhabism which, as interpreted by the official clergy, promotes the notion of the people's absolute loyalty to the Islamically approved ruler. It is hard for it to combat one manifestation of Wahhabism without undermining the other - and ultimately its own legitimacy. "So it simply must reform and build its legitimacy on a whole new foundation: democracy," said Tawfiq al-Sugahiry, a moderate Islamist.
Crown Prince Abdullah has clear reformist inclinations. But he is blocked by a rival clan around the mentally incapacitated King Fahd, the leading members of which seem to fear that any serious change will lead to the demise of the whole regime.
The increased popularity the crown prince will derive from the removal of US forces will strengthen his reformist hand. If things go well, that will rob the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration of their key interventionist pretext. If things go badly, the removal of US forces will make no difference to America's will or ability to intervene in the kingdom, since it is retaining enough military muscle in the immediate vicinity.
The question the Saudis don't know the answer to is whether it would intervene to protect the regime, or sacrifice it on the altar of its grand, unfolding, Israel-friendly, Middle East design.
How paranoid can you get?
First: Syria
Second: The Lebanon:
Third Iran
Fourth: Saudi Arabia.
They need to learn to wait their turn.
So9
"House of Saud, on the count of three I'm blowing you up! One... BOOM!!! Yeah, I lied."
Wahabbism is the fetid stinking rotten core of what is wrong with the Middle East. Cut out the cancer and the healing can begin.
IMO Saudi Arabia doesn't need "regime change" - it needs "people change" damn it!
We're okay with any Saudi government - dictatorial or otherwise - as long as it fundamentally respects US power and sells us oil. On the other hand, how much longer should we tolerate the vehement anti-Americanism of the Saudi public - you know, the 80-90% of Saudis who still think OBL's cause is just?
Yeah, because it has been the policy of Arab 'leaders' to use Israel as a scapegoat to take the attention of their people off the fact that they are living in a tyrannical hellhole.
Ever notice that the root of the word 'diplomat' is 'dip'...?
Nice imagery, there, Prince!
Memo to Bush Speechwriters - this sounds like future State of the Union Address material.
Absurd statement. If Iraq and "Palestine" become Switzerland tomorrow their hatred would not abate. They hate us because we are different, powerful, are women are not pieces of property.
The Arabs are the cultural equivalent of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. They externalize all of their problems and faults and are consumed by hatred and jealosy.
Nothing is going to satiate their hatred until their culture is transformed by "western enlightenment."
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