FLASH: Pentagon Advisers, Backed by Neocons, Have Now Defined Saudi Arabia as "Enemy"

FLASH 37: Pentagon Advisers, Backed by Neocons, Have Now Defined Saudi Arabia as "Enemy" (8/6/02)

[Update, 8/8/02: As late as 7/26/02, the usually accurate Stratfor.com (in a post for subscribers only) reported that the US Government regarded the Sudairy brothers as more reliable allies in the Saudi Royal family than Crown Prince Abdullah. If true, this would lead one to wonder about the quality of intelligence on which current US foreign policy is based. The foreign reporting below suggests that the Sudairys have shifted, and are no longer pro-American.

The foreign view is corroborated by a story of 8/7/02 in the London Times, reporting that Saudi Arabia `is in the process of concluding a special trade deal with Baghdad ... that could result in the establishment of a free-trade area between the two countries.'

The following paragraphs indicate that the key Saudi negotiator is the Interior Minister, Prince Nayef, who is in fact one of the seven Sudairy brothers:

`The key Iraqi player in the trade talks with the Saudis has been Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council in Baghdad. He visited Riyadh earlier this year and met Prince Nayef bin Abd al-Aziz, the Saudi Interior Minister, who, according to diplomatic sources, is in charge of communications between the countries.

`The normalisation of relations between Riyadh and Baghdad was illustrated at the Arab League summit in Beirut in March when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was seen on live television to embrace Ezzat Ibrahim, Saddam's representative. Saudi Arabia also joined its Arab League partners in a unanimous vote against any US military attack on Iraq.'

The US went to war in the Gulf twelve tears ago when Iraq was seen as a threat to its neighbors. We seem to be going to war today when there is a threat that Iraq and the other Arab states might learn to live and trade with each other in peace.]

On 8/6/02 the Washington Post revealed that a July 10 briefing by a Rand Corporation analyst to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board `described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

`"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.'

The story cited recent articles in Commentary, the journal of the American Jewish Committee, and the 7/15/02 Weekly Standard. More relevant may be the report in the June 26 Washington Times that `Israeli military intelligence officials recently released documents captured during raids on terrorist hideouts and Palestinian Authority (PA) offices in the West Bank detailing Saudi Arabia's role in financing Palestinian terror. The documents "come in many flavors. They include Saudi government and accounting schedules showing the amount of money paid to individual Palestinians and their families, with the names of suicide bombers and others who carried out armed attacks against Israelis highlighted," Kenneth Timmerman reported in Insight magazine."'

If you search on Google.com for "Saudi Arabia" + Commentary, you will find that there has been a lot of hostile commentary on Saudi Arabia in this country since 9/11, chiefly but not uniquely from neocons and other pro-Israeli elements. One commentary in the pro-military Milnet.com I found alarming because of the naive, simplistic quality of its thinking (its most sophisticated source is the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

It is also interesting to learn from Odwyerpr.com of 5/1/02 that no national media were willing to accept ads in `a $10 million campaign to burnish the image of Saudi Arabia.' The same story reported that in the New York Sun, Max Singer of the Hudson Institute proposed `independence for the Muslim Republic of East Arabia,' by `splitting the eastern portion (the part with the oil) of Saudi Arabia from the rest of the country.'

As the Washington Post was careful to point out, the Defense Policy Board (chaired by neocon Richard Perle) advises the Pentagon, but does not represent its official thinking. Nevertheless it is clear that, despite the general silence in the mainstream press, there is a lot of support for ending, or radically revising, the 60-year relationship binding the US to Saudi Arabia.

I never thought I would sound like a defender of the Saudi royal family, which is fairly condemned as reactionary and incapable of self-reform. The further charge that it has been unwilling or unable to crack down on its terrorists is also, for complex reasons, largely true (as for that matter it is also largely true of Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan).

But the issues of Iraq and Saudi Arabia have become intertwined. Saudi Arabian opposition to a US invasion is one of the major factors encouraging other powers -- most recently West Germany -- to refuse to take part in a US invasion. Prince Abdullah, whatever his defects, has acted recently as a force for peace in the Middle East.

It would be ironic if the US, having for a half century supported Saudi reaction because of oil, should now turn on the royal family for an even worse reason -- its resistance to US hegemony.

If the US were now to withdraw from Saudi Arabia and treat it as an enemy, we should no longer characterize Osama bin Laden as a zealot or madman, but as a master geostrategist. He would have achieved his stated aim.