Saudi Arabia, Off The Hook

Saudi Arabia, Off The Hook
The 9/11 terrorists were mostly Saudi. Suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi. And we're allies?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 20, 2005

I am no foreign-policy expert. I am no virtuoso of nuanced and wicked international relations. I know not of intricate deal making and smarm sucking and backstabbing and glad handing and the Bushes raking in millions from clandestine oil deals with the Saudi kingdom. Ahem.

But this much I do know. This much is sickeningly, painfully obvious. We are, apparently, bombing the wrong country. Or rather, countries.

Iraq, as anyone paying even the scantest attention now knows, had zero to do with 9/11. Saddam and Osama? Hated each other. Iraq hiding massive Costco-size warehouses of WMDs, big nasty biotoxins and nuclear warheads and giant boxes of bitchin' Red Devil firecrackers? A nasty joke, told by Bush, at Americans' expense.

So what we are left with is a relatively obvious question, and it has an obvious answer, and it's almost silly to bring it up because it's just sort of sad and so deeply ironic and ridiculous you can't even fully process it lest you begin to tear out your hair and scream obscenities at the wall, and anytime any image of Dubya appears anywhere in your purview your colon clenches and your blood boils and you can only think of gutting Karl Rove with a rusty pocketknife.

The obvious question is, if we are the Great Liberator, the great Crammer Down of Democratic Values, if we care so deeply about making 'Murka safer and granting the hot breath of stale freedom to the oppressed citizens of foreign nations whose leaders are abusing and oppressing and murdering them at will, why do we not bomb the living hell out of Saudi Arabia and call it a war?

Oh, I know. That's just silly talk. That's just blaspheming. I don't actually mean it. But it certainly is a red-faced demon on obviousness, and it must be asked.

Do we need justification? Sanctimonious moral authority? More pseudo-Christian rationalization, besides the fact that we've known since a month after 9/11 that the vast majority of the WTC terrorists were Saudi? We've got plenty.

Did you know that Saudi Arabia treats its women one barely noticeable notch above that of the brutal Taliban? Saudi women cannot vote. They are not allowed to drive. They cannot be admitted to a hospital or examined by a doctor or travel abroad or leave the house without the express permission and/or company of an immediate male family member, and of course they must, at all times, be covered from head to toe in black sackcloth and if they dare venture outside or break the fashion code in any way they could very well be arrested and jailed indefinitely and beaten and even killed, no questions asked.

Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are regularly tortured. Journalists are regularly arrested and persecuted and beaten for being too outspoken against the deeply repressed and closed kingdom. Human rights groups have been appalled by the oppressive and dictatorial Saudi society for years, perhaps no more so than following 9/11, when scrutiny was at an all-time high due to the obvious Saudi kingdom's connections to al Qaeda and terrorism.

Oh yes, we know the kingdom pays millions to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, to keep them from attacking their vulnerable oil fields, while at the same time investing billions -- that's billions -- into the U.S. economy. Hell, a major Saudi delegation just passed through S.F. this past week, as part of a national tour, trying to ease terrorist tensions and drum up even more investment interest, despite their nation's brutal, antihumanitarian regime. Isn't that sweet?

We know of Prince Bandar's close personal friendship with Dubya and who can forget that lovely scene in "Fahrenheit 9/11" where Dubya is giving Bandar a hot-oil back rub just after Bandar slipped a giant body bag full of gold bars and fried Texas pork rinds and a giant stack of Exxon baseball hats into Dubya's luggage? Exactly.


It's almost quaint, in a soul-crushing sort of way, how we know that Iraq is not our enemy. Or Afghanistan, for that matter. It is almost comical, really, how easily it could be argued that if we had an enemy, the single most problematic nation in the world right now, it might very well be Saudi Arabia, with their stranglehold on the world's oil and their hot breeding ground for Islamic extremists, those everyday people so beaten down and so inflamed into violent action by oppression and by Bush's vicious warmongering since 9/11 that they're willing to strap explosives to their chests and walk into a crowded market and push the button.

What, don't believe it? The Washington Post points it all out, right here, all about how a huge number of suicide bombers in Iraq are turning out to be mostly Saudi, and how both 9/11 and BushCo's negligent and insidious actions in the increasingly volatile Middle East have created the most incredible hotbed for new and crude terrorists since Osama started a summer camp.

Ah, but it doesn't really matter. Of course we won't bomb Saudi Arabia. And of course I promote no such vicious and violent, hate-filled, Dick Cheney-grade agenda. Of course we won't dare to apply the same bogus justification for insidious war against Iraq (that is, it's now all about humanitarian reasons, ha ha snicker) to a deeply corrupt and dangerous "ally," one that provides us so much oil and raw cash it makes Dubya giggle and squeal, one that invests so many billions in American real estate and business it makes Bill Gates cry. The Saudi kingdom is, after all, just insidiously vital to the American economy.

And for such vitality, we happily ignore that they perpetuate more atrocities on their own citizens -- especially the beaten and decimated women -- than anyone since the Taliban, or Saddam, or Kim Jong Il. We happily ignore that their "kingdom" is one of the most corrupt and oppressive in the world. We happily turn away from how, more than any other nation, Saudi Arabia is providing the world with more extremist martyrs willing to blow themselves up for Allah, just to make their outrage heard.

And can we forget how the Saudis are deeply and happily involved with the Carlyle Group, a nasty clan of military-lovin' fear-suckin' venture capitalists overseen by none other that bastion of WASP mafia love, George Bush Sr.? Always a nice, bitter footnote.

Oh, I know. I don't really understand foreign policy. I don't really comprehend all the nuances and the power plays and the true color of the political sleaze involved. Neither, of course, do you. We are not supposed to understand. We are not supposed to look. We are told it is all just fabulously complicated and slippery and by the way we have no right to judge nasty oppressive Saudi culture. Which is, you know, true enough.

So let's not judge. Let's just sit up straight and face the facts and spit it out. Let's just admit, once and for all, with zero prevarication and zero BS and zero BushCo squinting into the camera trying to look intelligent and articulate when he's the most devastatingly small-minded leader since ever, let's just say it is so straightforward and unvarnished that even the red states can understand.

Here it is: Bush could give a cold goddamn for all those tens of thousands of innocent dead Iraqis. This administration doesn't care a whit for all the dead U.S. soldiers. Every move our nation now makes under the BushCo regime has just about nothing to do with securing our borders and protecting us from "terror" and ensuring our place in the gilded pantheon of humanitarian nations that just want to spread peace and prosperity for all peoples everywhere. What a gag.

We don't give a crap for Iraqi freedom. We don't care a whit for Afghan poverty or the huge increase in opium production or how that drug money is fueling the resurgence of the Taliban. This administration couldn't give a thin dime for beaten Saudi women or oppressed Chinese dissidents or North Korean freedom fighters or the slaughtered masses in Darfur or Rwanda or anywhere else. This administration, in short, perhaps more than any in the past 100 years, cares nothing for human rights.

America now cares about one thing: empire. The rush to neoconservative power. And the perpetuation of fear as a means to securing that power for many years to come.

Obviously, we will never criticize Saudi Arabia. BushCo will never endanger our power, oil, empire. We have, as a nation, moved beyond hypocrisy, beyond savage irony. We are well into the pathological. And, given our sad, unfortunate leadership, it seems we can hope for little better.


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