The Saudi Paradox (The Nation)

[marmar]

article | posted April 10, 2007 (web only)
The Saudi Paradox

Mohamad Bazzi

Beirut

It's the last day of the Arab League summit, March 29, and at the New Man barbershop, Ali Trabulsi is keeping one eye on his scissors and the other on a wall-mounted TV tuned to live coverage of the Arab leaders assembled in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

"The Saudis are really challenging the Americans, aren't they?" Trabulsi says gleefully, shearing the beard from a customer's face. "They don't want to listen to Bush anymore. They know that he's weak and that his people are turning against him." When one of his assistants turns on a blow-drier, Trabulsi makes him turn it off so he can hear Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal boasting how Arab leaders refused to change any part of their peace offer to Israel.

But what really excited Trabulsi was a speech at the summit's opening a day earlier by Saudi King Abdullah, in which he denounced, for the first time, the US occupation of Iraq as "illegitimate." "In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing among brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war," Abdullah said. Trabulsi normally turns the TV in his shop to soap operas or music videos, but he tuned in to the summit around the clock--even if some customers complained about being bored by the rhetoric.

It's not just the notoriously skeptical Arab street that is falling for the Saudi regime's latest attempt to distance itself from unpopular US policies. American media and analysts rushed to portray Abdullah's comments as evidence that the Saudis are abandoning the Bush Administration, and that a renewed partnership between Washington and Sunni Arab regimes--to counter Iran--is dead.
...(snip)...

The US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq fueled a new wave of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Today, anyone allied with the United States is viewed in the Arab world as a traitor, starting with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. "People are against anything or anyone associated with America," says Mohammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief of the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat. "They don't want any more American meddling in the region."

The House of Saud has long experience navigating contradictory allegiances. Since the 1930s, the ruling family has managed a tenuous pair of alliances: one as an ally and major oil supplier to the United States, and the other as a political partner with Wahhabi clerics who dominate social and religious policy in the kingdom. The clerics have long vilified America and the West.

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070423/bazzi

[applegrove]

1. Thanks for posting. I look forward to reading this. n/t

[lyonn]

2. Bush has pissed off just about every oil producing country.

bush allows no one from his admin. to negotiate with any country that He feels is part of the Evil Ones.

Nancy Pelosi and friends need to keep making these peace keeping trips going if we ever intend to stay a strong country. Just to remind other countries that bush is an electoral anomaly and that the majority of Americans totally disagree with his policies, if you can call them policies. It appears if one of his stooges recommends something that sounds like a "powerful act" he wants to jump on his horse and ride with it.

The investigations going on in Congress are not about what many citizens want to spend political time on. What happened to the lies to get us into this war? The latest investigation is concerning Lynch and Tillman. What is the purpose at this point? What about the billions that are being wasted by the military and pentagon, etc.