If you watch the cable news channels much, you've probably seen (or soon will see) Adel Al-Jubeir, a representative of the Saudi Entity, who's been all over the press doing damage control for the royal family. To give him his due, I must say he's been doing a fairly good job of it.
Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam, has been a pretty tough critic of the Saudis. In today's NRO, he has some very tough questions he'd like to see someone--anyone--in the press ask the guy.
To give Al-Jubeir some credit, this morning, on Fox News, he was asked Schwartz' first question. He stated vehemently and unequivocally that Osama bin Laden and only Osama bin Laden and his network were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
One down, nine to go.
In the meantime, I'm pleased to see the Saudis having their cages rattled. I continue to maintain that being polite to these people and getting whatever we can out of them until we go to Bagdad is the only intelligent choice. I'll be awfully disappointed if the Bushies don't lean awfully hard on them after that, though. (And if we aren't in Bagdad by early Spring, I'll be the first to start the "Draft McCain, Draft Lieberman, Dig Up The Dead Body Of Harry Truman If We Have To!" movement.)
I see much discussion on the tele about whether or not the Saudis are our friend or our ally. I do not see it either way. I see them as our rival in the ME. We rival each other for influence with other nations in the region, both economically and as peacemakers.
I am sure they are walking a tightrope between representing not only their own but other Arab interests in the region as well; therefore, they do not want appear as the Arab-American lackey. At the same time, we want influence in the Arab world securing stable governments producing oil. If there is too much instability in the ME then we will pay exorbitantly at the cash register.
At the same time they want to represent larger Arab interests, they also want to maximize their influence with other Middle Eastern Arab governments. I suppose this explains all their hemming and hawing regarding Iraq. This instability threatens the corrupt Saudi government as much as it does us. If this war on terrorism is not solved the Saudi royal family will be replaced by a more menacing one. This will be bad news for the entire western world and Japan, not just us.
This makes it in our and the Saudi’s interest to topple Iraq’s destabilizing regime reducing the number of terrorist sponsoring states by one. Hopefully we can both agree on that.