Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald takes up the vexed question of how to deal with our friends and allies the Saudis.
Saudi Arabia needs to be read the riot act by someone — possibly John Bolton. And these are the things he should tell them. Here are 100 ways to bring Saudi Arabia (“Money can buy everything, except civilization,” as an Armenian who spent years in Saudi Arabia building military cities commented laconically) into the civilized world.
First, the days of Prince Bandar having private audiences, or King Abdullah being invited to anyone’s ranch, must be ended. Saudi Arabia should no longer be called an ally. It never was — not even at the time of Ibn Saud’s famous shipboard picture with Roosevelt. How could it be? How could a Muslim state, fanatical in the inculcation of hatred toward Infidels, conceivably ever be a real ally of an Infidel nation-state?
Second, every effort should be made, public and private, to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia — whatever propaganda campaign the Saudis pay for. The gouging-out of eyes that is in the headlines today, the treatment of Christians, the virtual slavery in which many from Thailand, India, the Philippines are held — all the stories that have been suppressed should now get the full attention of the American government, and of journalists. It should not be hard to find people who worked in Saudi Arabia, were ill-treated in Saudi Arabia, and who even saw others killed in Saudi Arabia, who would be happy to tell about it.
Third, those who long ago took Saudi Arabia’s true measure, such as J. B. Kelly, should be given respectful attention. For example, the real role of Saudi Arabia as the bully of the peninsula — supporting the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, or attempting to push Zayid aroud in the Buraimi Oasis dispute with what became the the U.A.E., or in attempting to bully Yemen not least by periodic mass expulsions of Yemeni workers, and in meddling with internal Yemeni politics — all of this should have been constantly noted by the Western press, but never once was even mentioned.
Fourth, American servicemen who felt the contempt of the Saudis who treated them as simply mercenaries whom they could order about, should be given full access to the service academies and the military press, as well as to the mainstream media.
Fifth, Saudi textbooks, the contents of the khutbas, or sermons, routinely delivered in Saudi Arabia, should be given exposure by every conceivable means — and there should be many journalists happy, at long last, to report the truth about Saudi Arabia.
Sixth, attention should be given to how the Saudis have spent their money since 1973. Why no art works? Why not a single Saudi scientist of note? How much was spent on arms? How much was spent on luxury goods? How much was spent — most importantly — on da”wa and jihad? Do any Saudis work, and if so, for how long each day? As for the Saudi penchant for “Western decadence” — a kind that will not go over very well in some circles in the Muslim East — the C.I.A. could easily supply to various Internet sites all sorts of pictures of Saudi princelings. For example, they could supply the amateur videos taken from a certain café in Marbella that show the boatloads of Western call girls being taken out to the waiting yachts of Saudis, just after their wives and children had been offloaded to other boats. Oh, there are a thousand things that, in a war, one can do to demoralize the enemy, or to cause the collaboration of certain key elements in the enemy camp.
Seventh, all means should be used to help those who are suing the Saudis for their role in all terrorist attacks. For their money, and U.A.E. money, and Kuwaiti money, underlie all the mosques in the West — and madrasas, armaments, everything. And all that has only been possible since 1973 with the OPEC bonanza.
Eighth, Congressional committees should follow up on the 9/11 Commission and the hearings held (all too quietly) not too long ago on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. They should study the subject of how, in the capitals of the West, the Arabs, and especially the Saudis, have bought influence. There should be undertaken a systematic study of every American ambassador to Saudi Arabia or to other Muslim oil states, including study of their reports to the State Department and their attempts to inform — or deliberately misinform — the American government and the American public. Their actions both while in office and in their retirement as “international business consultants with a particular interest in the Middle East,” as so many of them are called, should be carefully scrutinized. James Akins, Eugene Bird, Andrew Kilgore, the ex-C.I.A. agent Raymond Close, and a host of others should be called before Congress. Find out who is funding the Committee for the National Interest. Who pays for certain lectures? Who has received what, from whom, when? And this should also be done perhaps in London (certain members of Parliament have already been exposed as being on the Arab take) or Paris (well, we all know about Chirac, so scarcely need bother with him — but what about the lower level, the Roland Dumas level?) or Rome (everyone knows about Andreotti, but it was not merely a connection, unproved in a court but common knowledge, to the malavita, but his curious interest in promoting, at every juncture, the Arabs that bears looking into). As for the EU bureaucracy — well, why not find out a bit more about that den of iniquity, as Europe transmogrifies, hideously, into Eurabia?
Nine, if the Saudis can charge $40 or $40 a barrel for oil that costs less than $1 to lift, is it beyond the wit of the oil-consuming nations that supply the educated manpower on which the Saudis completely rely, that is, the West whose medical care and educational system the Saudis also rely, to do the same to them? Turnabout is fair play. Suppose, for example, every time a Saudi wished to visit the United States for medical care (the Mass General, the Children’s Hospital, the Mayo Clinic), he were to be charged not only the regular medical fees, but a “surcharge” that would be pegged as the same multiple of those medical expenses as the price charged for a barrel of Saudi oil is a multiple of the real cost of lifting that barrel? A $5,000 medical fee would have a surcharge of 40 times that, or $200,000. Unfair? Unworkable? Are you sure? Why is it any fairer than the Saudis who manage to charge oligopolistic rents because they are the swing producer — and who charge 40 times the cost of production? Why should not all the advanced Western powers together agree that even visits by Saudis to the U.S., to England, to France, to Italy, will be a very severely limited commodity — and will have to be paid for very considerably? This “surcharge” might be seen as a way of paying for the real cost of security now made necessary by Muslim terrorists. And any other means to discourage Saudi visits to the West — and to make clear that the Saudis (and other financers not only of terrorism, but of mosques in the West) are now pariahs, and will be treated as such, locked into their own Muslim world which, like the propagandist Tariq Ramadan, of course they cannot really bear (as Ramadan cannot bear not to reside in the West, and so has concocted Da”wa for a future Islamized Eurabia).
Ten through One Hundred: Use your own imagination, reader.