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Reality Check on Saudi Arabia

(Spectator-UK) Mark Steyn - The urbane Westernized Saudi princes in the Savile Row suits who get put up on CNN to assure America that the situation's totally under control cannot deliver. Although Prince Bandar, the Washington ambassador, is careful not to say anything too goofy in the U.S. media, back home his dad, Prince Sultan, and his uncles sound nuttier by the day. In November 2002, Prince Nayef insisted that no Saudis were involved in 9/11 and that, in fact, the Jews "are behind these events." Nayef sides with the anti-American Wahhabi clerics and this was his way of explaining why he wasn't going to crack down on Islamist terrorists, as they clearly have nothing to do with Islamist terrorism. Prince Nayef's half-brother and rival, Crown Prince Abdullah, on the other hand, is the famously pro-American liberal reformer. Last month, when terrorists killed various American, British and Australian expats in Yanbu, Abdullah went on state television and said, "I am 95% sure that Zionism is behind the attacks." With pro-American liberal reformers like that, who needs anti-American clerical reactionaries? Right now, which would you bet on? That Crown Prince Abdullah, Prince Sultan, Prince Nayef and co's brilliant strategy of denying that there's a problem, buying off the terrorists, letting them escape, and saying they're all Zionists will be able to reform their failing state or at least hold the lid on? Or that the current spate of attacks will increase and intensify, driving out Westerners, destabilizing the oil markets, undermining the economy, and gradually, remorselessly conscripting more and more of the population into al-Qaeda's ranks? Given that it's the Saudi government that funds all the madrasahs that form the ideological backbone of Islamist terrorism, is there any point in pretending that the House of Saud and al-Qaeda are on opposite sides rather than twin manifestations of the same problem? The West backs the Saudi regime as a bulwark against local destabilization, in return for which they underwrite destabilization of the West across the entire planet.
2004-06-04 00:00:00
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