NEIL
BUSH IN THE CROSSHAIRS
And
what is the great crime of the President's younger brother?
In the present atmosphere, of course, even being in
Saudi Arabia is enough to provoke suspicion, at least in certain
circles. "Officially," writes Isikoff, "the
president's younger brother was a keynote speaker at an international
business forum," where he tried to address the public
relations problem faced by his hosts. Ah, but the real
purpose of the visit was "recruiting Middle East investors
for an educational-software firm that, industry sources say,
may benefit enormously from the new $26.5 billion education
bill signed by President George W. Bush."
Say
what?
You
see, it goes like this: Neil Bush is a a
principal in Ignite!, which seems to be as
much a concept as an educational software company. Ignite!
promotes a Web-based interactive learning process, highly
individualized and daringly innovative, and, Isikoff admits
that "Bush appears
excited about Ignite's potential to boost student
performance." But that's only at the very end of
the piece, after he details the company's efforts to
secure contracts in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (is
this a crime?), dredges up Silverado
Savings & Loan (he paid out $26 million to settle
those claims), and then connects the "digital learning"
idea to provisions in the President's education bill
that encourage the concept.
A
DRIVE-BY SHOOTING
A
real stretch, if ever there was one, but that isn't the
real purpose of the Isikoff piece. The dripping gore at the
core of this journalistic drive-by shooting is in a parenthetical
remark, seemingly tossed off as an aside:
"(Among
the main backers of the event: the Saudi Binladin Construction
Group and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the tycoon whose $10
million offer to help the victims of the World Trade Center
attacks was rejected last fall by New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani.)"
WHY
DO THEY HATE US?
The
bin Laden family name comes up again, in connection with another
guest at this event: Bill Clinton, who was paid $300,000 for
a series of speeches. Isikoff points out that Clinton, all
too eager to take Saudi money, nevertheless took measures
to inoculate himself and his wife from charges of consorting
with the enemy: after learning that he was scheduled to attend
a dinner at which members of the bin Laden family – "(who
have disowned their terrorist brother)" – would
be present, Juanita
Broaddrick's rapist had them "disinvited." Why
oh why do they hate us, do you think? I just can't understand
it. Can you?
SECOND
THOUGHTS
Gee,
I wonder if any of the families of the victims of 9/11, who
are having insurance claims and other benefits deducted from
their government compensation, are beginning to recognize
what a posturing blowhard Giuliani is?
NOTHING
IN LIFE
The
idea that no member of the Bush family can benefit, albeit
indirectly, from the President's legislative program means
that any educational reform remotely tied to computer technology
is out of bounds until and unless Neil Bush gets out of the
educational software business. "What am I supposed to
do?" was the presidential sibling's plaintive cry: "Nothing
in life?" Well, gee, he could always go to work as a
journalist for Newsweek – which would amount to
pretty much the same thing.
LET'S
GO SHOPPING
It
took
guts to come to the Persian Gulf at a time like this.
Business travel in the area by Westerners has ground nearly
to a halt, and several companies are anticipating evacuation.
Clinton initially said he was going to cancel, but I guess
greed overcame fear and substituted for courage. Al Gore,
who was also supposed to address the five-day seminar, pulled
out at the last minute, but the President's brother showed
the colors – and also showed that Americans will not
be intimidated into cowering under their beds. Go about your
business was the President's advice in the wake of the 9/11
attacks. Go shopping. That's just what Neil Bush was doing
– and more power to him.
THE
"FORBIDDEN TRUTH"
Behind
the attempt to smear the President's brother is what I call
the "forbidden truth" thesis – currently being
pushed by a
French book of the same name – which basically holds
that the Americans let 9/11 happen because of the Bush family's
"softness" toward their friends in Riyadh. The long
relationship of "Big Oil" and the Saudi monarchy,
combined with complicated conspiracy theories worthy
of a Lyndon LaRouche (gee, isn't he French, too?), produces
the "forbidden truth": that the Bush administration
passively consented to what happened on 9/11 and collaborated
with what was essentially a Saudi conspiracy. It's the kind
of smear that could only have originated in France, world
capital of anti-Americanism and a country known, also, as
the birthplace of the school of philosophy known as deconstructionism,
which holds that objective truth is an illusion based on race,
class, gender, and ideology.
The
Democrats wouldn't breathe a word of this, naturally,
and so the task is left to their fellow leftists on the Continent,
who don't face the constraints of wartime. But now Newsweek
edges in that direction, raising the hint of an Enron-like
scandal involving Neil Bush – with a foreign policy twist.
CONSORTING
WITH THE 'ENEMY'
In
the context of the current vehemently anti-Arab, anti-Muslim
atmosphere, the mere hint of any business connection to the
Middle East (excepting Israel, of course) is analogous to
the days of the cold war when trade in Polish hams was considered
very close to treason. Of course, in the end, it was the trade
connection – and contact with Western culture – that was the Kremlin's undoing. But such subtleties are
lost in the present hysteria, where Neil Bush's attempt
to bring the benefits of educational software to the more
developed and liberalized Persian Gulf emirates is viewed
as inherently suspicious. "Every country has a concern
about the education of its children," he says, "and
I'm happy to cooperate with them" – Aha!, say
the Saudiphobes. Consorting with the enemy!
WEB
OF SUBVERSION
The
whole point of the Newsweek hit piece is to draw Neil
Bush – and, by implication, the rest of the Bush family
– into the alleged Saudi web of "subversion"
supposedly behind the 9/11 atrocity. It is a classic smear
out of the Clintonian playbook: a brazen frontal assault aimed
at discrediting if not totally destroying the victim. This
method, nonetheless, owes something to an older tradition,
the classic red-baiting smears of a more Republican genre
of character assassination. In the new cold war, pitting America
and Israel against the Arab world and Europe, the race is
on to see which party gets the upper hand – and the Democrats
are definitely in the running.
CUDDLING
UP TO ISRAEL
As
much as this Republican administration has tried to cuddle
up to Israel, the attentions of Sharon's American suitors
have been pretty consistently rebuffed. After comparing
President Bush to Neville Chamberlain, and vowing that
Israel would never suffer the fate of Czechoslovakia on the
eve of World War II, Sharon ignored the Americans and pursued
his "Israel First" policy of destroying the Palestinian
Authority as a political force. The Bushies have made a point
of uttering nary a protest, and have practically given the
Israelis a blank check in the region – at least in public.
THE
UNDERLYING CONFLICT
But
beneath the surface there are conflicts with Israel, beginning
with the basic divergence of Sharon and the Bush administration
on the strategic question of how to fight a war on terrorism.
Israel's view of the matter is that all Arab countries,
including especially the Saudis, are on the other side, and
cannot be considered allies of the West. Secretary of State
Colin Powell, and the President he serves, have quite a different
view of the anti-terrorist coalition: they do not want to
see the US, Israel, and perhaps Turkey and India, arrayed
against the whole of the Arab-Muslim world. Both realize that,
in tracing and tracking down the various elements of Al Qaeda's
international terrorist federation, the US is going to need
the cooperation of precisely those governments Israel sees
as its deadliest enemies.
ROOTS
OF THE CRISIS
Up
until very recently, the Israeli desire to build an anti-Arab
united front was effectively opposed by the big oil interests
– Exxon-Chevron, and their corporate allies – who
once enjoyed a near-monopoly on Arabian oil due to a special
and long-standing arrangement with the House of Saud.
But those privileges were effectively revoked by Crown
Prince Abdullah, successor to the ailing King
Fahd, an act which set in motion the current crisis in
US-Saudi relations.
In
a 1998 visit to Washington, the Prince announced to a shocked
audience of oil executives that the
days of special government-granted privileges were over:
from that day hence, the Saudi oil market would be opened
up to free competition. When Prince Abdullah returned home,
he announced – in
an unusual interview – that thousands of companies
from all over the world had already submitted bids worth over
$100 billion. US oil executives pushed the panic button.…
THE
OIL TRUST STRIKES BACK
Reconsolidated
by multiple corporate mergers, the
original Standard Oil-Rockefeller "trust," once
busted, is reborn. Yet the reincarnated Oil Trust immediately
finds itself in a fierce struggle for survival with foreign
competitors, as well as domestic independents, against a backdrop
of falling oil prices and a worldwide economic recession.
Having lost their exclusive Saudi franchise, the Trust is
now subjected to the indignity of being forced to compete
with the old Aramco, which formerly embodied their monopoly
and is now Saudi-owned. Why, the nerve of some people! For
that they would pay, and the Oil Trust soon struck back…
CONVERGENCE
The
first Gulf War started when the economic interests of the
oil trust coincided with the demands of Israel's lobby in
the US. Saddam Hussein, in asserting a claim to Kuwait as
Iraq's "nineteenth province," was deemed a threat
to the Saudi oil fields, and the House of Saud, the source
of the Trust's vast wealth. The Israeli lobby, for its part,
had an obvious interest in eliminating their principal antagonist
in the region, whose missiles were within range of Israel.
When these two interests came together, US military intervention
was the result.
THE
WIDENING TARGET
Now
these same conditions are being replicated in the post-9/11
Middle East, but with the target of the impending attack considerably
widened to include not only Iraq, but also Iran – and
perhaps even Saudi Arabia, under certain circumstances. For
King Fahd has been ailing for quite a long time, is
said to be senile, and is well nigh on 80 years of age.
In the event of Fahd's passing, the Crown Prince, who clearly
relishes flaunting his independence from the US, could face
a challenge from Prince
Sultan, the defense minister, whose wing of the Saudi
family could demand his appointment as Crown Prince as a condition
for Abdullah's ascension to the throne. This could provoke
a sudden crisis in US-Saudi relations, foreshadowed, perhaps,
by the current
shift.
BATTLE
FOR THE THRONE
Abdullah
is in his late 70s, and so the
question of his successor looms large in Saudi politics:
will the aging sons of Ibn Saud give up power to a new generation?
Abdullah seems determined that this must come to pass, and
against this the seven surviving Sudeiris, brothers sprung
from the womb of the same mother, stand as an obstacle in
his path. This subgroup within the House of Saud includes
King Fahd, as well as Prince
Nayef, the interior minister, and Prince
Salman, the governor of Riyadh.
There
are also the Sudeiri grandsons, including Prince
Bandar, US ambassador to Washington. The King already
once ceded his authority to the Crown Prince, on account of
debility, and then
later retracted his formal abdication, leading to widespread
speculation that a protest by the Sudeiri faction forced the
royal hand. There are all kinds of rumors, including tales
of attempts on Abdullah's life, and, in the event of King
Fahd's passing, the US could intervene on the side of the
fulsomely pro-American Sultan – who is likely to rescind
his half-brother's declaration of economic independence.
THAT
WAS YESTERDAY
Put
in this context, the fulminations of National Review,
the Wall Street Journal's James
Taranto, Andrew
Sullivan and his
fellow "warbloggers" against "our friends,
the Saudis" – as Taranto likes to put it –
come into clearer focus. Why, it seems like only yesterday
when, faced with an alleged threat from Iraq, we were told
it was necessary to go to war in order to save not only the
Emir of Kuwait but also the House of Saud. Today, our Saudi
allies – once deemed vital to the interests of the West,
and in whose defense we slaughtered an untold number of Iraqis
– are denounced as misogynistic
medievalist homophobic
tyrants, whose religion supposedly poses a deadly threat to
the West and whose rule must be ended. How quickly, and conveniently,
they forget.
FRIENDS
BECOME ENEMIES
The
recent statement by deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz
that, in the post-9/11 world, our
allies may morph into our enemies unless they get on board
the anti-terrorist bandwagon certainly startled the Europeans,
but is also applicable to Saudi Arabia. An all-out war, pitting
the US and Israel against the united Arab and Muslim states – with Turkey and India drawn in on the side of the US – is a real possibility. Yet there is another factor
that could bring the boiling Middle East cauldron past the
point of overflowing….
THE
IRANIAN FACTOR
While
the question of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts have largely
been forgotten or else put on the back burner by most Americans,
the question may come up again soon as rumors circulate that
the Evil One has sought the protection of Tehran. A
recent article by George Jonas in the National Post
raises just this possibility: Jonas posits a rapprochement
between two former enemies, Iran and bin Laden, based on necessity
and bin Laden's medical needs. Iran, avers Jonas, is the only
country in the region where the fugitive terrorist mastermind
could receive necessary dialysis treatments and still avoid
death or capture by the West. Could it be that Washington
now believes this?
Nothing
else, it seems, could account for Bush's designation
of Iran as one third of the "Axis of Evil" and his
diatribe against its "unelected" rulers. This last
drew
a retort from the democratically elected Iranian reformer,
President Khatami, previously an American favorite, who declared
Bush's "warmongering" an "insult to the
Iranian nation." While there
were reports that some Al Qaeda had fled to Iran, that
country had previously
pledged to cooperate with the US anti-terrorist effort.
THE
FUSES ARE LIT
How
all this plays out remains to be seen, but of one thing we
can be sure: there are several fuses of varying lengths that
have already been lit – in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, and
Saudi Arabia. Which one burns the fastest is a matter of conjecture,
but sooner or later an explosion is bound to occur – and take the whole region with it.
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