Prince Saud Al Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, pleaded with President George W. Bush on Tuesday to declassify some 28 blank pages dealing with Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials said they were desperate to rebut in public the suggestion that Saudi officials supported the 9/11 hijackers. Yet in an unusually public dispute for what is traditionally a highly private relationship, the U.S. president said no. “It makes no sense to declassify when we’ve got an ongoing investigation,” Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference. “That could jeopardize that investigation. And it made no sense to declassify … during the war on terror, because it would help the enemy if they knew our sources and methods.”
For his part, Prince Saud blamed dark forces for the furor. “Anyone who believes that this president will cover up for anyone culpable in the events of 9/11 must be out of touch with reality or driven by ulterior motives,” he told reporters standing in the White House driveway.
What ulterior motives could Prince Saud be talking about? The ulterior motives of the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who was standing in the Rose Garden alongside President Bush just hours before?
There are so many ironies here that even the truest believer can turn into a conspiracy theorist. Was the Saudi request a Kabuki dance, a stage show designed to show Saudi openness but never intended to reveal anything? If that sounds far fetched, let’s try the public version of events. That version says that relations between the Saudis and the Americans are so poor that they can’t agree how to move forward in explaining the Saudi role–unwitting or not–in the 9/11 attacks. That, in turn, does not bode well for what is supposed to be the main track of the relationship right now: close cooperation in the international war on al Qaeda.
Privately, though, administration officials readily admit that the Saudi authorities have taken a much more vigorous approach to cracking down on terrorists since the attacks on western-style compounds in Riyadh earlier this year. It’s hardly out of touch with reality to think the White House may want to protect the House of Saud to ensure that crackdown continues-and that was the real motivation for Bush’s Rose Garden refusal.
A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS
You might think the deaths of two of the world’s most murderous, depraved leaders would be a cause of some satisfaction, if not celebration. But the truth is that if you were cheered by the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, you were probably living in America. Much of the rest of the world found reason to criticize and condemn the United States.
How can Washington come under fire for killing Saddam’s evil sons? This is more than just a story of good and evil. It’s a story of parallel lives, of the same events seen through a different prism. And ultimately, it’s a story of quite different values. The mixed and even hostile reaction to the deaths of Uday and Qusay points to the far bigger challenge facing the United States in Iraq and round the globe. Forget the rights and wrongs of the critics just for a moment. If you listen to what they are saying, you can hear all the reasons why America is fighting to rebuild Iraq almost on its own, and why that lonely fight may well be repeated in other hotspots in future years.
Without naming names or countries, it’s worth breaking down the criticism of the sons’ deaths.
- The sons should have been brought out alive
The critics claim U.S. troops used excessive force in killing the sons. Fewer soldiers with lesser firepower would have done the job more effectively. The sons could even have been captured alive, interrogated for useful intel on the old regime, and ultimately placed on trial. American troops could have waited to smoke them out, using siege tactics to bag their targets.
Let’s set aside the need for helicopter gunships, the fact that four soldiers were wounded, and the length of the operation (almost three-and-a-half hours). What the critics are really saying is this: American troops are trigger-happy, overly aggressive, and care little about human life. The United States is far more interested in killing people than bringing them to justice, in line with international norms and historical precedent.
One columnist likened the amount of force used to Hitler’s carpet-bombing in World War II. It’s an astonishing and entirely inaccurate comparison. But the overall analysis fits into a neat stereotype about the United States and the Bush administration in particular. It’s too powerful, irresponsible in its use of force, and tramples all over international law.
- The sons were only crushed by overwhelming odds
It took around 200 armed soldiers backed by missiles, armored personnel carriers and helicopters to kill four lightly-armed opponents. The critics say the sons obviously put up a noble fight to the end, and were killed in an unfair battle.
This is a curious twist to the previous criticism, but nonetheless potent because it plays into the same stereotype. The Americans are too powerful for the world’s good, the critics say. Given a level playing field, the world would look very different–and maybe when Muslim nations are more militarily powerful, that will be the case, the critics hope.
- The sons’ bodies were paraded in a gruesome, humiliating way
According to Muslim tradition, the bodies should have been buried as soon as possible. Displaying them for several days was not just grisly, the critics say, but a sign of disrespect for Islam. Moreover, the display was hypocritical: Americans always complain when their dead are displayed in public.
You might argue that the people who really disrespected Islam were Uday and Qusay, who tortured their own Muslim population in the most gruesome, humiliating way possible. But let’s set aside the rights and wrongs again. What the critics are really saying is this: America wants to humiliate all Muslims and is engaged in a war on Islam. On top of that, Washington has double standards. It preaches civilized values then indulges in medieval barbarity, according to those same critics.
- The bodies were covered in cosmetic and the pictures were staged
The heavy make-up, the poor pictures, the morticians’ tricks. The thinly-veiled subtext here is that these weren’t really Saddam’s sons. Never mind the anecdotal evidence that many Iraqis believe the pictures were convincing. This criticism is all about American lies. The United States can’t be trusted, and has no credibility.
Taken together, the criticism is formidable. It is almost entirely misplaced, wrong-headed, inaccurate. Still, the most extraordinary part of it is that it comes from a broad range of sources–not just the Arab media, but European intellectuals and international broadcasters.
Given that kind of background plot, it’s little wonder that Washington has found it hard to bury the pre-war disputes that divided the international community. As long as there is so much distrust about American intentions in the region, and about American values in general, it is going to be a long and lonesome struggle to rebuild Iraq.
