The other two that befriended the Taliban were Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but Washington won't given them the kind of ultimatum that Musharraf says it gave him.
Some in high places in Washington, however, reportedly did briefly entertain an idea of freezing Saudi assets in the US and -- get this -- *seizing its oil fields*!
<blockquote><http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47913-2002Aug5?language=printer> Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board
By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01
A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.
"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.
The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration -- especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership -- and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.
One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."
The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia -- which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements.
Perle did not return calls to comment. A Rand spokesman said Murawiec, a former adviser to the French Ministry of Defense who now analyzes international security affairs for Rand, would not be available to comment.
"Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members' comments reflect the official views of the Department of Defense," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. "Saudi Arabia is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department's and the Administration's deep appreciation."
Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services."
If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted," although exactly how was not specified.
The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so -- in this view -- permit the U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.
"The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad," said the administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq. "Once you have a democratic regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after World War II, there are a lot of possibilities."
Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting, only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger's dismissal of the briefing and others did not.
One source summarized Kissinger's remarks as, "The Saudis are pro-American, they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage them."
Kissinger declined to comment on the meeting. He said his consulting business does not advise the Saudi government and has no clients that do large amounts of business in Saudi Arabia.
"I don't consider Saudi Arabia to be a strategic adversary of the United States," Kissinger said. "They are doing some things I don't approve of, but I don't consider them a strategic adversary."
Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle; former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.
Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. "I think that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts," he said. "Repeating lies will never make them facts."
"I think this view defies reality," added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. "The two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything it goes from strength to strength."
In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support for the mujaheddin.
At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel Hussein's invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region. Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his attacks on the United States.
The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small but influential group within the Bush administration.
"I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country," said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn't attend the July 10 meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United States "is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago."
In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard, which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted "The Coming Saudi Showdown." The current issue of Commentary, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, "Our Enemies, the Saudis."
"More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few all of it," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on military strategy. "Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country. . . . Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic interests or long-standing ties there."
Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board, declined to discuss its deliberations. But he did say that he views Saudi Arabia more as a problem than an enemy. "The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely a threat, [so] I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us," he said.
But that view is far from dominant in the U.S. government, others said. "The drums are beginning to beat on Saudi Arabia," said Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who consults frequently with the U.S. military.
He said the best approach isn't to confront Saudi Arabia but to support its reform efforts. "Our best hope is change through reform, and that can only come from within," he said.</blockquote>
The next day, the Bush administration immediately "distanced itself . . . from a Pentagon briefing that described Saudi Arabia as an adversary of the United States and a backer of terrorism" (Thomas E. Ricks, "Views Aired In Briefing On Saudis Disavowed," Washington Post Staff, 7 August 2002: A14, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50595-2002Aug6?language=printer>).
The briefing had to be disavowed because it revealed an open secret: the real US strategic asset and burden of the Middle East is not Israel but Saudi Arabia.
The Arabs and the Jews of Israel ought to think about that. While both peoples dream of Jerusalem, some of them killing each other, what's really on the mind of Washington is how best to protect the estimated 264.3 billion barrels in the desert kingdom (Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2006, p. 28, <http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/0484(2006).pdf>).
The only Arab leader who actually threatened Saudi Arabia (at least in the mind of Washington) is Saddam Hussein, and look what happened to him.
For the same reason, Washington will never give up on its dream of a regime change in Iran, no matter how many diplomatic setbacks it suffers and no matter how long it takes. Iran, in addition having its own great assets (132.5 billion barrels, EIA, p. 28), is close, too close, to the Gulf states. When the Shah of Iran was in power, he helped to protect Washington's interests not only in Iran but also in the Gulf states: the People's Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Occupied Arab Gulf was "crushed by an Omani state reconsolidated after the coup of 1970, and by a combination of British, Iranian and Jordanian intervention" (Fred Halliday,* "_Arabia without Sultans_ Revisited," Middle East Report 204, <http://www.merip.org/mer/mer204/halliday.htm>). After the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, the role of Iran in the Persian Gulf changed dramatically, to the lasting chagrin of Washington, which is one of the reasons I cherish the Iranian people, the French of the Middle East.**
If Washington plots a regime change that installs a pro-Washington government in Iran, the Iranians, as well as the Arabs, ought to promote -- by means that avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein -- revolution in the Gulf states, a democratic social revolution that would serve the interests of the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the rest of the Middle East, and beyond. The question is, does the road to Riyadh figuratively go through Jerusalem (unlike the neo-conservative dream of literally going through Baghdad, hoping to get to Riyadh but ending up in a quagmire), i.e., the Arab masses' anger against Tel Aviv turning against their own governments -- especially the Gulf states -- allied with them?***
* Boy, was he once an interesting writer!
** Both the French and Iranians are good at urban revolts and revolutions rather than rural people's wars, the latter of which were the main roads to social revolutions in the 20th century. Both the French and Iranians have done remarkable things, every 20-40 years or so, that put them on the notice of the world throughout their modern history.
*** <blockquote>The Arabs watched, with an anguish that constricted their hearts. We received many delegations, many Arab delegations, in Lebanon. They told us that the Arabs had their hearts constricted for the first four days, because they expected defeat. After the tenth day, the Arabs couldn't believe their eyes. That begins to spread. There is an enormous uneasiness in Egypt and in the Egyptian army. The same goes for the Syrian army. People say: "How is it that Hezbollah is able to do that? And us? What are we doing?" (Chris Den Hond and Nicolas Qualander, "The Decline of Israel: An Interview with Nahla Chahal," <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dhq170906.html>)</blockquote> Are the Arabs in the Gulf states thinking the same thoughts? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>