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June 1, 2004
Keep Quiet? Never!
The story of James Cottle, William Sampson, and the others unjustly arrested and tortured by Saudi Arabia is one that can only fill any right-thinking person with horror. When traveling to a foreign country one assumes that, if there is trouble, your government will be there to help. "How can our government not go all-out to help us?" we ask. During Roman times, if a Roman citized was threatened by bandits all he had to do was cry out "I am a Roman!" Those who would do him harm knew that while they might get away with murder today, it was only a matter of time before the legions laid waste to their lands.
We should and must demand that our governments never allow a situation to develop again whereby one of our citizens is unjustly held and tortured. However, in order to correct the situation we must understand how we got to where we are now.
For the fact is that the United States, Great Britain, and other western democracies have long supported, or at least tolerated, certain dictatorships. We have done so for a variety of reasons. In the Second World War we allied ourselves with Stalin's Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. When asked about the morality of such an alliance, Churchill replied that he "would ally myself with the Devil himself if it would defeat Mr Hitler."
During the Cold War we allied ourselves with many authoritarian regimes. South Korea, Taiwan(Republic of China), Iran under the Shah, various Latin American countries, the list is almost endless. And in southeast Asia we allied ourselves with the South Vietnamese government, no Jeffersonian democracy there.
We did this for the same reason that we allied ourselves with the Soviet Union during World War II; to defeat a greater evil. In the 1930's and '40s Nazi Germany presented a threat that would extend beyond it borders, while the Soviet Union was happy to murder it's own citizens. Likewise during the Cold War years; the Soviet Union represented an expansionist threat while the various dictatorships around the world were happy enough to repress their own citizens.
The justification in both instances is that there are different shades of evil, just as there are of good. Churchill was under no illusions about Stalin as he know him to be thoroughly rotten. But Hitler could destroy Britain and all of Europe, so he was the one to be defeated at the time. The government on Taiwan was not until recently a democracy, but the communist one on the mainland was infinitely worse.
This is the concept of relative evil. No one said that the dictatorships that we have tolerated or even supported were good. It is rather that they were less evil, or less of a threat, than the one or ones we were trying to defeat.
Which beings us to Saudi Arabia.
American and British governments are both reluctant to even gently critics the Saudis. It cuts across party lines in the U.S., as Bill Clinton's policies were no different than those of George Bush. While the far left believes, or rather, rants, that it is all due to "Bush family Saudi oil connections" and spins various conspiracy theories, more sober observers know that the truth is far more simple. And the simple truth is that Saudi Arabia is important to us for two reasons; oil and strategic military cooperation.
The oil part hardly needs elaboration. Petroleum is key natural resource. Right now, at our current state of technological development, it represents that most "bang for the buck" energy wise. We will no doubt move away from this dependency as time goes on, but to believe that we can do so quickly is environmental utopianism.
In order to understand the second part we must go back to our concept of relative evil. The fact is, Saudi Arabia was very helpful in defeating Saddam's Iraq. They provided much more help than was acknowledged at the time; bases, intelligence facilities, oil at bargain prices, and more. This cooperation started in it's present form during the Desert Shield operation in 1990. Without Saudi Arabia, we would not have been able to recover Kuwait.
When policy-makers are presented with a situation such as that which befell James Cottle, this concept of relative evil is no doubt the basis of their decision making. They seem quite willing to sacrifice individuals for the "greater good". And, sad to say, the story of James Cottle and the others falsely imprisoned is hardly the only human-rights abuse the Saudi government has committed against us.
American women who have, while living in their home country, married Saudi men have many times discovered to their horror that he has packed up the children one night and fled home. Worse, there is no way to get them back. Forget an appeal to one's own government, for they are not going to help. This has been extensively documented in National Review magazine, among other places.
But do policy makers face the same situation with regards to Saudi Arabia as that which occurred in our earlier examples?
They would answer "yes". And, on the surface, they have a point. We need their oil. Without it our economies would suffer greatly. And we need their cooperation in the War on Terror, they would say, for a variety of reasons I'll not list here.
I would argue that they are wrong. They need to sell us their oil as much as we need to buy it. The Gulf states depend almost entirely on oil revenues. They have no factories and produce nothing else of note. They can refuse to sell oil only for a short period before their economy would totally collapse as they have no other significant source of income.
Some might say "well, they can refuse to sell it to us, but still sell it to other countries." However, oil is a fungible commodity. One drop is as good as the next. When oil is sold it is done so on a world market, and the only important measurement is the total amount available worldwide. If they refuse to sell to us, but say, only to Japan, the Japanese would buy need to buy less from say, Indonesia. Indonesia would have a surplus that we could buy.
Regarding the War on Terror it should be obvious by now that the Saudis are perhaps the most vulnerable of all nations. They are Osama bin Laden's primary target. He sees them as not being worthy stewards of Islam's most holy cities, Mecca and Medina. He means to overthrow them and Al Qaeda has committed many bombings in that country.
So what should Americans, Britons, Canadians, and other like-minded citizens do when loved ones are unjustly imprisoned by the likes of Saudi Arabia?
During the Vietnam War, American wives of captured pilots were similarly urged to "keep quiet" about their husband's imprisonment. Initially they cooperated, but after several years of inaction they decided to speak out and bring the matter to the public's attention. To it's credit, the Nixon Administration finally decided that a harder line towards the Vietnamese was needed. Melvin Laird, Nixon's Secretary of Defense, decided that quiet diplomacy was unproductive and that more public efforts were needed. It was believed by many that it was the public campaign that finally led to productive negotiations.
We must therefore continue to put pressure on our governments to revise their attitude towards the Saudis. The current British policy of advising against "all but essential travel to Saudi Arabia", simply will not do. Exposure will embarrass them. They know that their government is fragile and they need all they help they can get from us. Put simply, they have more to lose than to gain by not reforming. Let's make sure they are forced to do so.
Posted by Tom at June 1, 2004 11:00 AM
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