When The Ties That Bind Become Shackles

R.V.Tucker

Muhammad Al-Sheikh put things in proper perspective when he wrote a column in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah entitled ‘Thank you America’ in which he reminded the Saudi’s of a history with the United States that spans six decades. It was the late King Abdul Aziz (founder of modern Saudi Arabia) who chose to allow American’s to come to the Saudi Kingdom in search of oil. Aziz was also responsible for choosing capitalism over communism after WW11, allowing a country with nothing to grow enormously wealthy and powerful. Muhammad Al-Sheikh writes, “We must admit that our relations with America were the cornerstone for our development and progress. In return, we must ask what we have gained from our relations with the Arab world. Speaking frankly and unequivocally, all we got from them was trouble. Our brothers, as they call themselves, conspired against us, attacked us, and used all the means at their disposal to derail our plans for unity.”

In the 18th century Mohammed ibn Saud (local chieftain) formed an alliance with a sect of Wahhab fundamentalists. Together over the next 200 years they conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula including the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Wahhabism is based on a very strict interpretation of the Koran and from what we understand today there has been violence for centuries between the different religious sects of Islam which is contrary to Bin Laden’s claims among others that Islam is a perfect, pure and peaceful religion.

If I understand correctly it was that rivalry between sects that threatened the Saudi Kingdom’s leadership of the Muslim world. The Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970’s combined with a brief takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca left the Saudis shaken and fearful that Iranian radicals would assert their own leadership in the Muslim world. And so, ‘the mother of all propaganda campaigns began.’ (The Saudi Connection by David E.Kaplan)

According to a Washington think tank (Center for Security Policy) the Saudis have spent over $75 billion from 1975 to last year on overseas aid; two thirds of which went to building Mosques, religious schools and Wahhabi religious centers around the world. Last year the Saudi weekly Ain Al-Yaqeen listed 1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges and nearly 2,000 schools in non-Muslim countries. It’s estimated that the Saudis have invested some $600 billion in American banks and stock markets.

For at least 25 years fundamentalist Wahhabism has gone unchallenged even by the more moderate Imams, it has been allowed to fester and grow like a cancer, spreading its diseased infected form of twisted hatred for not only other Islamic sects but the entire non-Muslim world and Arab governments that it feels are too secular. Just as much of the non-Muslim world ignored the implications of terrorism in the 90’s, the Saudi government ignored its own culpability in ‘laying the ground work’ that is, until the attacks turned ‘inward.’ A July 10, 2001 article by Larry C. Johnson (former State Department counterterrorism specialist) depicts the overall U.S. view before 9/11.
http://afghanlaw.de/The%20Declining%20Terrorist%20Threat.htm

We can analyze terrorism for the next hundred years but to have real insight one only has to listen to and read the words of Imams and Clerics. They make it crystal clear, one world religion, one world flag and one world order! Yes, it’s about ‘oil’, those who have it, those who need it and those who want control of it but oil is just one component in the overall master-plan. Yes, they want all foreigners out of the Middle East; they want complete and total control of the oil, the land and the people; they want to enforce Sharia law and they want all Jews destroyed. Do we give them what they want?

I will not forget the elation and laughter displayed by Bin Laden as the twin towers came tumbling down and the death toll rose far beyond his expectations; what he didn’t expect was that with every attack, and every death we get deeper inside the mind of his madness, he didn’t expect that millions of Muslims would turn against him and toward democracy. He didn’t expect that Islam itself would be under a microscope.

Much of the world is bound together by a need for oil, free trade and probably other ways I know nothing about and now we are becoming bound by a mutual need to protect ourselves from a common enemy. I wonder if Osama is laughing today.

saltynsixty@yahoo.com