Oh! What a Tangled Web we Weave........Oh! What a Tangled Web we Weave........
It is now nearly the end of July and the so-called "War in Iraq" has been officially declared at an end, despite the fact that on average, at least two US soldiers have been killed by armed Islamic Ba'athist partisans each week subsequent to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's formal announcement of an end to hostilities.
To my great frustration (and doubtless to the relief of covert domestic surveillance analysts who keep tabs on websites like this...or am I inflating my own self-importance rather too grandiosely?), the server that formerly supported this website crashed in the middle of May, taking me effectively off the etherwaves at the least opportune time. After all, there are few things more frustrating than yanking the soapbox out from under a closet intellectual who is in full cry. This server crash would not have been a major issue, had not the ancient software I use to maintain & support this site have decided to cease cooperating at roughly the same juncture. After two months of vainly coaxing and wheedling my system to cooperate, I was finally able to restore my website through help of a friend. This involved loading some updated software, which I am happy to say has resolved things beautifully. Meanwhile, however, an entire new Middle Eastern war has been launched, fought, and 'concluded' (don't you wish!) without so much as my being able to utter a squeak of protest. There is undoubtedly a major lesson in Zen/Taoist awareness in all this that I should perhaps heed, by removing my thoughts from all the idiocy that has attended "Gulf War II...The Sequel!", but being of Irish heritage and inherently obsessed with such trivial things as moral rectitude and right-thinking, right-doing, reflectively viewed life, I have elected to continue sharing my opinions on the subject of the 'New American Imperialism.'
Although unable to pour my frustrations out onto the electronic page as is my usual wont, I have spent the past two months engaging in some enlightening reading. Chief among these latest books are three that I feel should be on everyone's reading list who is seriously concerned about the present and ongoing transformation of America from the world's most successful democracy into a dangerously duplicitous capitalistic 'imperial superpower': 1) The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast (ISBN: 0-452-28391-4), Feb 2003; 2) Why Do People Hate America?, by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies (ISBN: 0-9713942-5-3), 2002; and last, but of substantial interest, former CIA agent/analyst Robert Baer's most recent insightful book Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold its Soul for Saudi Crude (ISBN: 1-4000-5021-9), 2003.
All three of these books are very helpful for enabling further insights into the inner workings of this distillation of 'America the Great' into 'America the Imperial'. Greg Palast's books are all routinely dismissed by most right-of-center individuals (who similarly dismiss all of Noam Chomsky's brilliantly insightful books as "...just more of that Communist's trash"), but if you are able to get by these de rigueur right-wing barriers to objectivity, Palast is able to document much of the illicit processes whereby American political partisan politics and closely associated (Republican) corporate interests have enabled George 'Dubya' Bush's rise to power with such dismaying impact.
The second book, "Why Do People Hate America?", addresses the question that so many 'average' Americans have (in all innocence) asked (after the events of 11 September) with astute alacrity, balanced analysis, and extremely thoughtful candor. This book by Sardar and Davies has been a very popular book among English language readers in the rest of world, but remains virtually unknown and unread within the USA. In it, among other things that are addressed is the issue of how the true 'democracy' that has been America's birthright since its founding moments has been presently emasculated and hopelessly bogged down by the degeneration of the American political process of elected political representation into a completely co-opted (by corporate interest) system of highly polar and partisan bickering between the two mainstream American political parties (the Democrats and the Republicans). The central point here is that American democracy is no longer functionally democratic or truly representative of the essential wishes of its ordinary citizens.
Chief among the book's features is a carefully presented and painstakingly documented dissection of the process wherein American culture has been championed (by Americans) as the only really worthwhile socioeconomic system in the world today. The 'American Free Market model' weltanschauung is, in essence, the hyperdistillation of an extremely chauvinistic, self-centered and markedly ethnocentric (read: White Anglo Saxon) world-view that today's frightfully powerful American corporate 'globalistic thinking' represents--an essence that is at once intellectually and realistically disturbing and unsettling to all people who are not citizens of the United States of America. Taking this a step further, the authors pointedly discuss how America's attitude towards everything outside its own borders profoundly reflects the traditional American (White Anglo Saxon) tendency to view the rest of the (non-white Anglo Saxon) world in terms of a highly structured (and patently distorted) 'pop mythology' not unlike the 'Old West' model that reduces everything to a simplistic "Good Guys and Bad Guys" (Cowboys & Injuns) formula. Appalling as this hypothesis may be to anyone who considers him or herself to be an enlightened, open-minded thinker, it rings true enough to make the blood run colder than normal...as Sardar and Davies aptly illustrate. With the world seen as being populated (from the American vantagepoint) only by Americans and all 'them dark-skinned boogeymen out there', is it any wonder that the rest of our interpretations of extant reality reflect similarly simplistic biases?
Among the many interconnected ties and strings
of influence that support the American 'globalised' web of economic activity
are the (American-dominated) World Trade Organisation (WTO) and
International Monetary Fund, analyses of which help the reader gain insight into
the insidious (and grossly naive) regard with which America views the rest of
the planet. Central to this theme of America's simplistic, chauvinistic
misinterpretation of world-wide realities is the role that today's massively
perfusive and irresistible exportation of economic 'culture' plays as a vector
of spiritual disease. While the thought of "America as an agent of
disease" is at first somewhat perplexing to contemplate, this analogy makes
excellent sense once one builds up the necessary context of circumstances within
which to regard it (as Sardar and Davies manage to do so well and with so much
carefully cited, fully researched documentation).
Copies of this excellent and important book may be obtained through any book store, or by visiting the publisher's website (Disinformation Publishers, Inc. at www.disinfo.com ). I highly suggest that it be read by anyone who still wonders why it seems half the world appears to hate America, despite the self-deluding impression that we Americans are simply trying to bring peace and freedom (and 'Christian charity') to the rest of the (heathen) world.
Finally, last but not least on my list of timely books that deserve the widest possible reading is former CIA agent Robert Baer's latest analysis of the unholy alliance that has existed for decades between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America. Baer's book serves to explore two important subjects simultaneously and while it explores the sensitive, secretive links between American corporate profits (read: Cheney, Bush, and virtually the entire Republican Administration) and Saudi Arabian oil resources on the one hand, it also examines the central role that these US-Saudi ties have had in allowing and enabling the utterly conservative Wahabist Islamic extremism to thrive and spread throughout the world like a rabidly cancerous lesion.
As an expatriate who spent many years living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from about 1983 through 1997, much of the general theoretical background context of Baer's book is familiar ground to me. As an employee of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, under Prince Sultan, I wasn't in the country long before I was moderately well versed in much of the classical history that led to the founding of the distinctively virulent and absolutist Wahabist sect of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. With an experience derived from years of living amongst, working with, and socially interacting with Saudis from all levels of civil, Royal, and military levels of life, I viewed the activities of the extremely conservative Wahabis as an unavoidable but 'contained' nuisance that made life difficult for expatriates, but one which the Al Sauds successfully managed (so it seemed to me from the inside) to keep in check. Although I am not extensively read in all areas of modern day Islamic history, my understanding of the period of classical Arabian civilisation is significant. What Baer has done, only someone in a position such as he enjoyed could have undertaken; that is, paint a very revealing picture of the interconnected events that solidly tie the extremist Sunni school of ultra-conservative Wahabism to the events that occurred on 11 September.
Baer traces the development of the Muslim Brotherhood, with all its sub-septs, lateral ties, and associations to terrorist activities either linked directly or indirectly to Wahabist Sunni extremism with riveting detail. Seen in the greater context of this several decades long process of terrorist group development, is the fact that the United States has had such strong economic ties to Saudi Arabia since the early WWII war years (and before that)--with so many wealthy Americans regularly dipping their hands into the (to use Baer's phrase) "Saudi cookie jar"--that for decades the American Administration has chosen either deliberately or conveniently to look the other way while the Wahabist terrorist movement was gathering deadly steam.
Among the facts Baer lays out are that this alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States has been founded and centered exclusively on greed and political necessity. Over a period of time, influential American businessmen and government leaders have become so accustomed to routinely taking immense kickbacks, payoffs, and 'rewards' from wealthy Saudis that the end effect is not unlike the relationship the substance addicted have with their supplier. An apt analogy, for without the supplier, the addict faces a painful withdrawal (in this context, from long accustomed 'easy' wealth). Just as no addict in his right mind wants to inform on his supplier to the police, nor would any American corporate chieftain such as Dick (dirty money) Cheney encourage anyone to focus on the terrorist threat to American (and world) peace that his baksheesh (Arabic term for 'payoff' or 'kickback') supplier was cultivating in his own back yard. This disarmingly simple explanation for the collective blindness of all of America's entire world-wide intelligence operations in failing to fully detect or adequately warn of the coming events of 11 September lies at the heart of the matter. Too many highly placed corporate and political individuals were making too much money by diplomatically 'turning a blind eye' to want to rock the status-quo boat.
Even as an expatriate American working
in the Kingdom, I experienced the practical application of this basic truth of
standing US-Saudi policy. Despite the most egregious of circumstances taking
place and throughout my entire stay in the Kingdom, I and all other expatriate
Americans were continually reminded by our own Department of State that we could
not depend upon the US Embassy to formally intercede or help any of us,
should we run afoul of the Saudi laws in any way whatsoever. This was a
blanket policy, applied uniformly and despite the circumstances, no matter how
unfair or inappropriate that involvement of a US citizen was. In other words, we
were Americans citizens in Saudi Arabia in name only; the embassy made it
crystal clear on numerous occasions that our national legation was only
concerned with the affairs of US corporations and commercial interactions with
the Saudis--not in the individual personal affairs of its citizens--and
would only intercede on behalf of corporate activities in Saudi Arabia! For
comparison, contrast this policy to that of nearly every other national embassy
in Saudi Arabia, all of which stood staunchly at the side of any of their
expatriates, whenever and wherever they needed assistance while resident in the
Kingdom.
To understand this status quo state of affairs, one has to be aware of the fact that until the early 1900s, Saudi Arabia was still just an unremarkable nomadic region of the Middle East, populated by constantly warring tribes and possessed of no centralised form of political rule. Just after the turn of the century, the original Al Saud king, Abdulaziz, managed to unify what is today Saudi Arabia with the help of the Ikwahn, ferociously devout extremist warriors who were members of the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam. With the help of these formidable desert warriors, Abdulaziz Ibn Al Saud became the first ruler of a unified Arabia which he named after his own family (Arabia of the Al Sauds, or Saudi Arabia as we know it today). NO Arab tribal chieftain had ever managed to unify the scattered nomadic (Bedouin) and constantly warring tribes populating the Arabian peninsula before. However, despite the remarkable achievement of unification, the new nation remained painfully poor (Baer makes reference to the fact that the original Saudi 'treasury' was a tin box that the King had carried around with his retinue, in which were deposited the few valuables he possessed; whenever the King owed anyone money, he would write a promissory scrip which at some uncertain future date could be redeemed by a visit to the keeper of the King's tin box!).
Then, in the mid 1930s oil was found under the Arabian dunes and the accumulation of fabulous Saudi wealth we are all familiar with today began in earnest. As the Al Saud Royal Family grew wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, the development of the elite Royal Family grew from merely a family in power to that of a privileged super-class far above the level of most average Saudi people. As the development of Saudi oil production grew, so did the outrageous excesses of the Royal Family's numerous princes and princesses until the Saudi Royal Family (estimated to be on the order of some 10 to 15 thousand individuals by 1985) increasingly attracted the severe antipathies of the Wahabist elements of their society that had helped bring them to power. As the Saudi Royal Family grew more corrupt, more bizarrely ostentatious, and further removed from the conservative teachings of Wahabist Sunnis, they realised none too obscurely that unless they continued to cultivate favorable relations with the Wahabists in their midst, their dynasty could easily be overthrown.
Thus, a precarious balancing act developed within the Kingdom: a very carefully calibrated balance would have to be struck between trying to modernise the nation (and allow the Royal Family to remain in absolute power) and catering to the extremely conservative demands of the formidable Wahabist Islamic right. This became in decades past (and remains virtually today) a matter of fact policy in the internal Saudi domestic power-structure.
Meanwhile, the West (read: America and its corporate oil cartels) had become accustomed to feeding regularly off the generous noblesse of the Al Saud fortune, regarding Saudi Arabia as both its principal strategic energy 'reserve' and one of its principal watering holes for continuously reaping lucrative oil and defense contract profits. (Our old friend Dick Cheney and all of his Republican fat-cats were part of that original group of oil and defense wealth junkies then and they remain in that posture today--surprised?). Thus, a highly dependent nexus of interconnected dependencies grew up from this process. The corrupt Al Saud monarchy needed American protection to remain in power against an increasingly strident internal conservative Islamic faction that could easily depose the Al Saud monarchy. US corporate entities, on the other hand, needed the Al Saud wealth and investments to continue bolstering the US economy (not to mention supporting the increasing American economic dependence on Saudi oil and the regular infusion of Saudi paybacks), and therefore when the Al Sauds started first to allow and then encourage the growth of conservative Wahabist Islam, it wasn't long before the Wahabist school of radical Islamic faith started to spread abroad like a virus run amok.
The Soviet (then Russian) invasion of Afghanistan provided a welcome relief for the Al Sauds' internal threat from religious conservatives and therefore both the Al Sauds and the United States provided aid to the anti-Communist insurgents. Saudi aid consisted of radical Islamic expatriates, as well as money and arms, while the USA contributed covert support to the Mujahedeen 'freedom fighters' through infusions of both military technical support (arms and instructors) and intelligence.
The fact that, as Baer brings forcefully out
in his analysis, it was just a matter of time before the Saudi financed and
American supported Afghani guerillas turned on the Christian West (due to their
core belief that ALL non-Islamic peoples were 'the heathen enemy') was
completely lost on all save an elite few intelligence analysts whose warnings
were drowned out by the overwhelming sounds of oil profits and the previously
alluded to policy of turning a blind eye to Sunni Islamic extremism. The fact
that the Reagan Whitehouse obsessed on Iran of the 80s, with its Sh'ia
extremists and embassy hostage situation, did nothing to help warn of the real
future danger to America and the world: not the Sh'ia, but the Wahabist
Sunni fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At any rate, this has been a long but necessary digression to lay proper understanding for the point Baer is making in his excellent book and it indeed rings resoundingly of my favorite personal motto: 'We have met the enemy and he is us!' Thus it can be better seen that the same wonderful folks who are now trying desperately to hide the fact that they lied to the American people over the causes for going to war in Iraq (the Bush Administration) were in fact all part of the formative process that brought today's worldwide terrorist situation to flower. The Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is particularly smeared by his previous (and probably ongoing) connections with Saudi wealth, as are all of the Bush family, and just about every other Republican in the present Bush Administration.
One last point that Baer bring out that is worth remarking upon is the fact that the CIA and almost all of the other US intelligence agencies have been and amazingly are still so fixated on the antediluvian shadows of the Communist Cold War years boogeyman that they still reflect 'Cold War' strategic defense strategies and situation awareness in their foreign policy actions today. A good example of this pathetically obsolesced policy is found in National Defense Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who obtained her doctorate thoroughly immersed (perhaps 'saturated' is a better word) in an international policy paradigm of the old Communist threat school of the 60s. Of further interest is the fact that during the early Afghani Mujahedeen 'freedom fighter' years (at the onset of the Russian invasion of that country), America's informal intel position was that these Islamic fanatics--while perhaps 'somewhat' dangerously radical in their religious and political philosophy--constituted merely a 'useful' tool to employ against the Communists/Russians.
Sleeping with the Devil is overall not just an insightful exploration of the steamy guts of US big-wealth connections to Saudi Arabia's two-faced internal and external policies supporting Islamic radical extremists, it is also a very readable and engaging book. I am quite sure that despite the fact that the CIA has 'officially' read through and approved the book (after much censoring and deletion of 'sensitive' sections of it) in its present form, many in that institution still cringe any time someone brings up former-agent Baer's name.
As someone who has been in the Kingdom for a long period and actually witnessed all of these dynamics in daily encounters with the Saudis and western political and defense officials, I can testify to the essential truth and alacrity of most of Baer's expostulations. This is a book that needs to be read by all Americans who have vague feelings that all is not quite as it may seem, when Dubya faces the nation and between smirks tells us why we are where we are now. The one major criticism I have to make of Baer's analysis is that he seems to make the broad and unqualified inference that the ruling Al Saud royal family are somehow malevolent in their intent to fan the flames of fanatical Islamic groups--meaning that they have a specific and intentional interest in so doing. This I would argue is not the case. One has to consider the tenuous tightrope that the Al Sauds are walking presently, that is a very fine thread between retaining their existing monarchy and losing the Kingdom to their resident fanatical Wahabi extremist faction.
Even when I was employed in the Kingdom (1983-1997) it was plainly evident to all of us that the Al Sauds pandered to their fanatical Wahabists out of obvious fear over what the Islamic extremists in their midst could do to overthrow the Al Saud monarchy. While a resident of the Kingdom, situations abounded every day that demonstrated clearly to us expatriates that the royal family's catering to the Wahabi extremists was not undertaken out of sympathetic, devout belief in the extreme Islamic interpretations of Wahabist Islam, but rather as a large and continuing blackmail 'payoff' to keep these fanatics safely at bay. Thus it was that the harassment activities of the Saudi Mutawa'an (religious police) would flare up with regular periodicity in Riyadh, be allowed to continue briefly, and then be ritually contained only after the Al Sauds finally felt compelled to dampen their enthusiasms down after the usual flurry of official complaints had been received from foreign embassies (in defense of their expatriate workers employed in the Kingdom and against whom most of these internal religious outbursts were usually directed). Baer correctly states that the development of the external Islamic extremist movements (particularly in Egypt & Afghanistan) helped take the heat off of internal containment needs of these fanatics in the Kingdom, by encouraging them to leave the country and organise their activities elsewhere. Monetary support of these groups abroad simply followed of necessity and helped keep the extremists safely away from Saudi Arabia, thereby taking a lot of the heat off the Al Saud monarchy's internal affairs.
While there is no doubt (at least in my mind)
that the Al Sauds were doing this all principally to preserve their accustomed
manner of privileged lifestyle as rulers of Saudi Arabia, a secondary
objective was also to bring a more 'westernised' social and cultural state of
being to the Kingdom. This second agenda item was something that
absolutely infuriated the Wahabi extremists, who felt that embracing a more
western lifestyle and sociocultural outlook constituted no less than a complete
sell-out of all things Islamically pure. As an ultra-privileged 'superclass'
above the common peoples of the Kingdom, educated in the west and embracing
every material pleasure afforded by western society's liberal morals, the Saudi
royal family understandably wanted dearly to bring that level of 'enlightened'
westernisation to the Kingdom. The Wahabi extremists predictably fought the plan
every step of the way, hence it was always to the Al Saud family's best
interests to throw a (rather large) bone (of money & support) outside of the
doghouse (to use a poor analogy, considering the symbolic significance of 'dogs'
to Arab society) to keep the jackals diverted. This, and nothing more sinister
in terms of motives, was always behind the purported support for external
Islamic extremist activities that the Al Saud's allowed to be
perpetuated--either by direct monetary payoff (funding & support), or by
turning a blind eye towards any such activities that served as a channel for
directing this support out of the Kingdom.
After reading Baer's book, even those who have not 'been there and done that' should have their eyes a bit more wide open as to why it is that the term "American" is increasingly uttered with the same inflected emphasis as a dirty word, these days. [One last thought: I note that no mention at all was made in Baer's book of the wildly inflammatory Islamic extremist group known as the "World Assembly of Islamic Youth", or WAMY, which was always notoriously active within the Kingdom and which was undoubtedly a major conduit and crucible for inciting extremist activities, both in the Kingdom and abroad. As a 'front' organisation of fanatical perpetuation of all forms of radical Islam, WAMY deserves intense scrutiny by any analyst interested in the specifics of the Saudi connection. The fact that Baer could either overlook or be ignorant of the significance of this internal Saudi Islamic extremist cabal suggests to me that even his perceptions of Saudi Arabia's role in fostering world Islamic extremism--as astute and interesting as they are--are not yet complete and wholly mapped out.]
Chris Carey, July 2003
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(Picture credits: The Disinformation Company, Harpers Magazine, and AdBusters Magazine)
