ACCOMMODATING THE AMERICAN LEFT

Another American counter-assault seemed to be brewing, a particularly dangerous one. Less than one month following bin Laden's ordered suicide attack on New York and Virginia, a former United States' President, an icon of the left, with star status, made long remarks at Georgetown University, his and this publisher's alma mater. In those remarks, given on November 7, 2001, the former president reasoned about the state of the world. At one time, he called for activism on behalf of democracy, seeing that political system as a "stabilizing force." He said, "...it's no accident that most of these terrorists come from non-democratic countries. If you live in a country where you're never required to take responsibility for yourself, where you never even have to ask whether there's something wrong you should be doing to solve your own problems, then people are kept in a kind of a permanent state of collective immaturity and it becomes quite easy for them to believe that someone else's success is the cause of their distress." He went on to note: "...in the Middle East most governments are characterized either as theocracies...or they're secular governments but they're either weak democracies or they're not real democracies. And underneath there are fundamentalist movements that essentially say the west is the source of all evil...So it's all backward looking."

Was this a call for an American penetration of the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, a la campaigns we've used to open up other countries? Former President Clinton was soon to visit Saudi Arabia, invited by the Economic Forum Of Jeddah. Sources revealed to the Arab press that the former President was paid one million Saudi Riyals for his participation in the Forum--the equivalent of $266,000.