Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses a favored proposition of official dhimmi Washington — that we should work together with the Saudis to combat terrorism:
Blame the “experts.” Blame C.I.A. intelligence agents who operate at the level of Michael Scheuer: a schoolboy, with a schoolboy’s understanding of Islam, and his worldview vitiated by his peculiar views on assorted Jewish cabals here and there. Blame the former National Security Council “senior director for Middle Eastern affairs” who continues to suggest (see Flynt Leverett, “Ambassador with Portfolio” in The New Duranty Times, July 26, 2005) that we should work to “combat terrorism” jointly with the Saudis and should reach out to the new Ambassador Prince Turki, and who repeats phrases about “access to oil” and the oil market that show he hasn’t the faintest idea how the world oil markets work, or what the role of Saudi Arabia has been in oil-pricing over the past third of a century, and who even believes that the “war on terrorism” is “at its heart, a war on Al Qaeda.” Naturally, such a person has no conception of why the islamization of Europe, even if it occurred in a completely peaceful fashion, would be a mortal threat to the United States and to Western civilization. When such a person talks about reestablishing our “strategic partnership” with Saudi Arabia (by which one assumes he is referring to the fact that the Saudis wanted to help, for their own Muslim reasons, defeat the Russians in Afghanistan, and for their own Wahhabi and Al-Saud reasons, wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and were thrilled to have the Americans do it — just as twenty years ago they were happy to help, with the Americans, resupply Saddam Hussein with American tanks, their Saudi markings painted over by, among others, an acquaintance of mine), let us take it with a large grain of salt.
Flynt Leverett is a great believer in appeasement of the Saudis, which he thinks is necessary. It is contained in a sentence toward the end of his Op/Ed piece: In order to win over Prince Turki to join the fight against terrorism, he says, “the United States would need to be prepared for a serious conversation about modifying its policies toward regional security, stability and peacekeeping in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli peace process to recognize Saudi interests and initiatives — a conversation that Prince Turki could facilitate.”
This is the same mixture as before: more of the same appeasement that has been tried for the past 33 1/3 years. Yet a different strategy toward Saudi Arabia was set out brilliantly by J. B. Kelly in his detailed “Arabia, the Gulf, and the West.” But we would never put in place taxes, ever-increasing, on gasoline at the pump, or on oil, in a way that would have allowed us to recapture oligopolistic rents (perhaps several trillion dollars) because we were all so busy with the “expert” opinions of Western hirelings: lawyers, public relations agents, businessmen who wanted to sell arms and others who did not want to diminish those petrodollars because they derived such individual profit from “recycling” them, diplomats, intelligence agents who lacked intelligence, and the likes, it seems, of this Flynt Leverett.
And this Flynt Leverett, who let me remind you is the “former senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council,” ends his Op/Ed with this remarkable paragraph:
“The 60-year partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia was not, as President Bush alluded [sic] in a 2003 speech, a mistake. It was, and remains, an indispensable element in America’s quest for a mroe stable regional and international order. The administration should take advantage of Prince Turki’s presence in Washington to give that partnership the attention it deserves.”
What deserves attention is how someone capable of thinking that there has been a “partnership,” and not a consistent snookering, of Infidel America by malevolently anti-Infidel Saudi Arabia, was ever allowed near a government office, much less allowed to become the “senior director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council.” I can hear Kelly’s scorn and bitter laughter now. With this kind of “expert” helping direct or form our policy toward Saudi Arabia, we are lost.
The Flynt Leveretts of this world, who so misunderstand Saudi Arabia and the nature of that hollow “partnership,” do not realize that the Saudis have never been our allies. Sometimes there has been cooperation when, for their own interests, they wished to back Iraq against Shi’a Iran, or the muhajedin against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, or were happy to see the Americans remove Saddam Hussein. But that is very different from saying we have been partners. In Afghanistan, once the Soviets had gone, the Saudis backed to the hilt (and so did the U.A.E.) the regime of the Taliban. The Taliban, in turn, gave aid and comfort and refuge to the Saudi-financed Al Qaeda forces of Bin Laden. While the Saudis dislike the Shi’a of Iran, they do not dislike them because they find the Islamic Republic of Iran hideous in its imposition of the Sharia and in its totalitarianism, but merely because the Iranian Shi’a and the Saudi Wahhabi are mortal enemies. If the Saudis were happy to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it is not because he massacred nearly 200,000 Kurds — the Saudis saw nothing wrong with that, and never mentioned it. Nor did they care about his massacres of the Shi’a. No, all they cared about was Saddam Hussein’s threat to them.
It is the same with terrorism. They are indifferent to terrorism, except that which is directed at them, and their interests. Why should they care if Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah, or Jaish-e-Mohammad or Laskar Jihad, attacks Hindus, Jews, Christians? Why? It would violate everything the Saudis so deeply believe in, even if some smoothy, with liquid brown eyes and a soft voice (is Prince Turki one of those, one of those whose daggers-and-dishdasha war dances of triumph are only behind the scenes?) assures us, or some Barbara-Wawa level of interviewer, otherwise.
There is no need to appease Saudi Arabia on anything. In fact, we should be letting them know that the continued existence of the House of Al-Saud, or of its control over the Al-Hasa Province, and its continued belief that the Americans will protect them, can no longer be taken for granted. And one test will be whether the Saudi funding for mosques, madrasas, Da’wa of every kind (look at the Freedom House report on Saudi anti-Infidel hate literature all over American mosques) ends. Because if it doesn’t end, we can regard Saudi Arabia as the declared enemy, and begin to seize its illiquid assets. Such talk will get their attention. It is the only way, in fact, to get their attention.
Will someone in the Pentagon please bring J. B. Kelly over for a little walk down Memory Lane, about Sheik Zayed, and Pachachi in Abu Dhabi back in 1971, and why Oman and Sultan Qaboos are not getting their due, and why Saudi Arabia is by far the most malevolent state in the entire area? What would it cost? A plane ticket? A hotel room for a week? Bring him over. If someone in the Pentagon sufficiently high up is reading this, you know what to do. And while you’re at it, how about having Bat Ye’or come in to discuss the islamization of Europe — that is, Eurabia? Another ticket, another hotel room. Last I looked, the Pentagon was spending half-a-trillion. Has it gone up? Can you afford two tickets, and two hotel rooms, possibly with a Saturday-overnight so that you can save a little on the Pentagon budget, for more rah-rah propaganda about the Democracy Is On the March stuff?
C’mon Pentagon, you can take a moment from your busy busy schedule to listen to J. B. Kelly and Bat Ye’or in the flesh — can’t you?