Posted on 06/02/2002 6:40:07 PM PDT by vannrox
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.
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....
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.
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...
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...
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...
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....
-- KotS
Some solutions truly are history-bound. There is no way on earth Ataturk could succeed today were he to embark on a similar campaign. The intellectual climate simply does not permit it...I mean is there anyone, anywhere who could get suckered into emulating the "West?"
No, I think there can be only one Council of Trent. After that, you're just increasingly likely to end up with a Vatican II...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.