The terrorist attack on westerners at the Oasis resort in the
Saudi city of Khobar last week had two goals. First was increasing
the instability of the Saudi monarchy. Second — and by virtue of
the first — was preventing any relief for the American economy
from the astronomical price of crude oil. If the terrorists can
maintain the pressure on our economy, they hope to help defeat Bush
in the fall. They have achieved at least a temporary success on
both points. We have to increase our pressure on the Saudi monarchy
to make sure that success doesn’t continue.
Crown Prince Abdullah — the de facto Saudi ruler since King
Fahd’s stroke in 1996 — is no friend of America. At about 78 years
of age, he’s unlikely to remain in power very much longer, and the
question becomes one of succession. If you look past the effluvia
of the Saudi spin meisters, you would conclude that a power
struggle has been going on for years. There is a “struggle” going
on, and there even may be a dime’s worth of difference to us who
wins, but no more.
THOSE SEEKING TO TAKE the reins in Saudi power are one sorry bunch.
Prince Sultan, the oldest, should succeed Abdullah, but his
challengers — Princes Naif and Turki al-Faisal — seem stronger.
Sultan is another Abdullah. His “routine” Wahabi anti-westernism
has the grace to put a smiley face on support and tolerance of
terror. His is an appeasement that buys the Saudi royals an
exemption from assassination. Prince Naif, the Interior Minister,
is another matter altogether. He is the custodian of the “Dawa
fund,” a supposedly charitable fund that supports Muslim
evangelism. But under Naif, the fund is one of the chief financial
pipelines for al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Naif is a
very bad actor, and would turn the Saudi oil sales back into the
weapon it was in the earliest days of OPEC and Jiminy Carter’s
“malaise.”
Somewhere between the two, and working with both, are the other
players. They are the professionally false moderates such as Prince
Bandar (ambassador to the U.S., whose wife financed the escape of
some of OBL’s family from the U.S. right after 9/11, under the
noses of our ever-vigilant State Department and other intel folks).
Another in this pseudo-faction is Prince Turki al-Faisal, now the
Saudi ambassador to the UK and Ireland. Turki is a far more radical
Wahab. Formerly the head of Saudi intelligence, he has met with
Taliban chief Mullah Omar (to persuade him, he said, to surrender
OBL) and knows bin Laden himself.
The terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia are — according to al
Qaeda — aimed at toppling the Saudi regime. Not so. Al Qaeda and
the rest don’t want their Saudi money to be cut off. They want it
to increase, and without fear of interruption. That’s why their
attacks have been on westerners, and not on the Saudi royals. By
targeting the western presence the terrorists prevent any
moderation among the Abdullah faction and strengthen the Naif
group. With every terrorist attack, the radicals gain strength and
make their inclinations more public. And Bandar and Turki play
their game quite well. Consider Turki’s latest round of “diplomacy”
in the UK papers.
In a May 24 letter to the UK’s Independent, Turki said,
“No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war, in the
final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars
conducted by the ex-colonial powers when they went out to conquer
the rest of the world …” Singing from OBL’s sheet of music, Turki
added, “What we read and hear from our commentators in America and
sometimes congressional sources…there was the issue of the
oil reserves in Iraq and that in a year or two they would be
producing so much oil in Iraq that, as it were, the war would pay
for itself.” According to Turki, this “indicated that there were
those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the
natural resources of Iraq for America.” Those American imperialist
running dogs are at it again. Turki, like Abdullah, Sultan, and
Bandar, pushes us just so far, but no farther. They realize that
they are as dependent on oil sales to us as we are on oil purchases
from them. They walk a narrow line. It’s time to give them a
shove.
OUR DIPLOMATS ARE FEVERISHLY arguing that we shouldn’t exert any
pressure on the Saudis while they fight to stabilize their country
after the terror attacks. The diplos point to the “cooperation”
they gave us in the Khobar Tower and USS Cole bombing
investigations. Nonsense. Saudi cooperation is a myth. It didn’t
happen. The Saudi government — like every other despotism — is
inherently unstable. And that instability should be maintained, to
our advantage.
The Saudis — as insecure as they are — are easy targets for
our pressure. We can up the ante by first cutting off their most
obvious efforts to thwart what we are doing. The State Department
is arguing that Adnan Pachachi — the former Iraqi foreign minister
who is noticeable only for his Sunnism and anti-Americanism —
should be the new president of Iraq. Pachachi is a close friend of
the Saudi royals. That, alone, should disqualify him.
Of equal or even more importance, the Saudis are in a position
to help us deter or preempt whatever terrorist attacks may be
planned against us this summer and fall. Anyone who believes that
OBL and his ilk don’t have an October Surprise of their own, hoping
to defeat George Bush, is dreaming. The President should call his
“buddy” Abdullah and explain to him — none too gently — that
America under-reacted to 9/11. If there is another major
attack here — particularly one employing nuclear, chemical, or
biological weapons — we will over-react against any and every
nation that might have contributed to the attack. Anyone, the
president should say, who doesn’t want to be on that list has to
cooperate now. That cooperation has to be more than just talk. It
has to take the form of capturing and turning over people, giving
us actionable intelligence, and cut off the money flowing to the
terrorists. And then he should hang up.
Yes, that will be insulting. Yes, that could be handled with far
more diplomacy by the EUnuchs or in another UN kabuki dance. But
those approaches fail again and again. We’re run out of time to be
nice.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than
You Think.
