By Jamie Glazov, a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He is
the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist and of Canadian Policy
Toward Khruschev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002).
Born in the U.S.S.R., Jamie is the son of prominent Soviet dissidents,
and now resides in Vancouver, Canada. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice
column for angst-ridden leftists at EnterStageRight.com.
May 10, 2002
SOMETIMES lovers become strangers.
The U.S.-Saudi love affair is a case in point. It’s over. It has actually been over
for quite some time now; it’s just that the Americans didn’t know it yet.
It took September 11 for the Americans to smell the coffee. That’s because the
Saudis were heavily implicated in the terrible terrorist attacks that occurred on
that tragic day.
But yes, there was a loving relationship – for more than a half century. The
partnership was of mutual benefit to both parties and it reached its zenith when
the two countries confronted Saddam Hussein in Kuwait in 1990-1991.
You could say that the 1980s were the “golden years” of the American-Saudi
romance. That’s when the two lovers were on the same side in the Cold War.
Both countries funded the rebels in Afghanistan against the Soviet
invaders. Both worked to contain the fanaticism of the Iranian revolution in
1979 – which explains why they supported Iraq launching its war against Iran in
1980. The Saudis also helped fund the American-backed Contra rebels against
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
And there were also economic ties. Most importantly, the Saudis faithfully kept
their oil prices and supplies at levels that suited the American market.
But then, with the crumbling of the Soviet Empire, something new began to
happen.
With the Evil Empire gone, Saudi Arabia realized it didn’t really love, or
need to love, America as it once did. So it started a secret and duplicitous love
affair.
It began an affair with the forces that sought to destroy America, as well as the
Western world overall. That’s what the Saudis always wanted to do – it’s just
that they had to put that particular objective on the backburner during the Cold War.
Just recently, we have learned that the Saudis, along with Saddam Hussein,
have been giving “blood money” to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers
and to each Palestinian who is wounded while trying to kill Jews.
The Israelis have also just recently unearthed evidence that confirms what
American intelligence already knew: that the Saudis have been bankrolling
Islamic terrorism against the West for years. They have donated large sums of
money and arms to bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban. Three major
organizations that have laundered money for bin Laden and other terrorists, for
instance, received millions of dollars from the Saudis.
Just recently, it has been discovered that Saudi Arabia is funding the Hamas
terrorist group to enable it to produce a short-range missile called the “Qassam.”
The Saudi money flow to all of these groups is still to be cut off. Keep in mind
that bin Laden, his terrorist network, and the Taliban all acquired their psychotic
philosophy from the Wahhabi ideology, a form of Islamic fascism that rules in
Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis export their religious hatred. They send aid, for instance, to foreign
Islamic religious schools that teach Wahhabi ideology and other forms of
fundamentalist political Islam.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came
from Saudi Arabia. The rulers, after all, oversaw the recruitment of
approximately 25,000 Saudis to wage holy war against Israel, America and the
West.
The Saudis, in other words, bear a heavy responsibility for September 11.
No wonder the House of Saud has been so stubbornly uncooperative with the
United States in investigating the terrorist attacks, in supporting the U.S. war in
Afghanistan, and in stopping their funding of jihad groups.
As a matter of fact, U.S. intelligence sources have confirmed that, at
this very moment, Saudi Arabia is spending millions of dollars to help al Qaeda
and Taliban fighters escape American justice.
All of this makes perfect sense of course: why should the Saudis help in a war
that is targeted against themselves?
The Saudis, you see, hate America. And they hate the West.
It doesn’t really take a rocket-scientist to figure out why the Saudis have
launched this new war in the post-Cold War era. The end of the Cold War
terminated the clash of political ideologies and yielded the clash of civilizations
— Western vs. Islamic.
Let’s get one thing straight: The Saudi and Arab hatred of America and the
West has nothing to do with Washington’s support of Israel.
It has everything to do with envy and resentment. The Arab world
simply feels an excruciating sense of humiliation because of its pathetic
impotence in the face of Western success. Thus, in a desperate attempt to
avoid confronting the reality that its civilization is a basket case, the Arab world
entertains a delusional belief in some kind of lost glory – which has been stolen
by the Westerners in general and by the evil Jews in particular.
It is not the easiest thing for Arabs to reconcile themselves with the reality that
their culture has yet to produce one prosperous, functional and democratic
society. Yet not only must they face this fact in the context of the success of
the Western world, they must also face it in the context of how the Jews came
to a tiny little stretch of desert in their midst fifty years ago and built the most
powerful economic and industrial nation — and the only democratic nation — in
the entire Middle East.
Today, the Arabs hate Israel, like they hate America and the West, because it is
the concrete symbol of the utter failure of Arab civilization.
One can only imagine the fury that must exist among a people who have to
depend on a civilization that they despise. Indeed, the Arabs know
subconsciously that the West is superior, but they must daily convince
themselves – against all the empirical realities in front of them – that it is inferior.
The Saudi ruling regime, meanwhile, is the host of the holy places of Islam, and
yet it is obvious that without U.S. protection and support, it would crumble
overnight. Indeed, the Saudis have no choice but to do business with the
United States. They need American weapons. And only the U.S. can protect
their strategic interests — as Operation Desert Storm revealed.
One can only imagine the humiliation the Saudis feel in being the caretakers of
Islam’s holiest shrines, but simultaneously being pathetically dependent on
infidels for their own survival.
It is obvious how a deep-rooted and intense hatred of America fertilizes
itself in this dynamic. Another phenomenon, meanwhile, blends into this hatred:
the fuelling of anti-Americanism because of a rendezvous with Americanism.
Today, the Saudis who most hate America and the West are not those who
Western Leftists wish they would be: the poor and downtrodden Saudis who
are the victims of unequal distribution of wealth. To the contrary: they are the
wealthy individuals who have studied in American universities and spent time in
American society. They are the approximate 200,000 American-educated
Saudis who could not thwart their desires while they intoxicated themselves
with American freedom.
Just recently, the 100 or so Saudi intellectuals who issued a virulent anti-U.S.
petition were precisely the members of this group.
What is happening here?
What is happening is that this new stratum of Saudis feel that it is only by
defying, and destroying, the United States and the West that they can achieve
some kind of dignity, self-control, forgiveness, revenge and, yes, personal amnesia.
For the American-educated Saudis, a certain schizophrenia has developed in
their psyche because of the dual and incompatible lives that Islam and America
nurtures in them. When in America, many of them enjoy the wonderful benefits
of a free society; they go about as they please, talk with whom they please,
listen to the kind of music they please, drink alcohol, dance and, yes, even
have sex.
Many of the Saudi women even take their veils and robes – Islam’s body
bags for the living – off.
But then, it’s time to go back to prison – back to Saudi Arabia. The veils and
robes go back on, the spontaneous freedom ends, and the miserable and
depressing life of strict Islamic living returns.
While they long for the freedom they cherished and enjoyed, these
Saudis simultaneously indulge in tremendous guilt and self-loathing – for they
have violated the Islamic codes they venerate. This self-hatred leads to a hatred
of the entity that tempted them in the first place.
It becomes clear why traditional Saudi theologians condemn suicide bombings
as terrorism and the new American-educated and secular Saudis hail it. Unlike
the traditionalists, they have come into contact with Satan and danced with
him. They must now annihilate him in order to annihilate the natural parts of
themselves that they hate.
This whole phenomenon is directly connected to why suicide bombers blow
themselves up. Expressed through suicide, Jihad allows the Muslim males to
punish themselves for the agonizing guilt they harbor regarding their sexual
feelings for women – who are demonized in Islam.
Muslim males hate women because they are symbols of their own lust and
repressed sexuality. As a result, males must oppress and denigrate the object of
their lust. But this does not mean that males’ natural attraction toward the
opposite sex disappears. The result is excruciating sexual rage and guilt. The
problem is that wherever men oppress and despise women, a collective form of
suicidal behavior emerges. In the Muslim Arab world, the society is so
pathological that suicide takes on a literal form.
Thus, it only makes sense that Islamic terrorists violently strike out against
American freedom in the same way that they strike out against their own
women: they hate what stimulates their desire and guilt. In punishing America,
they punish their own sinful urges.
All of this perfectly explains why the Saudis who hate America the most are the
ones who fell in love with America – and with the freedom it temporarily
bestowed on them. Now engulfed with the guilt of having sinned against
Islam’s rigid moral code, these Saudis need to punish themselves – as well as
those who have tempted them.
But instead of blowing themselves up, these well-to-do and American-educated
Saudis have the luxury of exempting themselves from martyrdom, and seeking
penance through funding it instead.
It is this new Saudi Arabia that now exerts the most influence on the
Saudi regime. No wonder the House of Saud was so massively implicated in 9/11.
The Saudi-American love affair is over.
The sooner the Americans face it, the safer Americans will be.
That’s because, once the U.S. spurns the Saudis once and for all,
Americans will have alliances with real friends – and not with the serpents who
smile in their faces while funding and training the demons who fly planes into
American skyscrapers filled with thousands of innocent people.
