WHAT'S WRONG WITH PRINCE BANDAR BIN SULTAN?

Open Letter to the Saudi Ambassador From an Aged and Tired Arab Nationalist.

By Zein al-Urban (Pseudonym)

Editor's Note: SPC received this Open Letter some time in late April 2004. Its author continued for weeks afterwards to change it--and hasn't yet fully completed it!

Dear Prince Bandar:

Congratulations: You are now an American politician, de facto.

Your television appearances, if they continue, will put you on the path taken by Anwar al-Sadat. When young, my friends and I used to wait for Sadat to appear on television, so we could laugh and cry. Among the ranks of Arab nationalists, he was a clown, a buffoon, an Uncle Tom, a pothead--someone who sold for a few bucks what little was left of Arab honor and made a mockery of his predecessor's legacy.

Worse, by withdrawing Egypt from the ranks of the Arabs, he motivated the civil war in Lebanon. His actions caused nearly all the misery that subsequently befell our Arab nation. So we cried.

You've started on this course. Please stop. Unlike Sadat, you're not the darling of a Jewish community who saw a man of peace in that Egyptian president. You have no such constituency; yours (and the Kingdom's) is made up of the House of Bush, and of some in the business community who flatter and fawn their way in and out of the Kingdom. This is hardly sufficient to give you a sympathetic television audience. Not after September 11, anyway.

It's not fully your fault. I don't think any Saudi--or any Arab--can say enough to please an American audience. In a very basic way, Osama bin Laden and the American-engineered breakup of the Arab Iraq (and its later invasion and occupation) have driven a terrific wedge between Arabs and Americans. The American losses in Iraq and the unavoidable mistakes that an occupying power will commit (note: Abu Ghraib and the massacres to come) will only widen this gap and alienate these nations.

So, I beseech you: Do not appear on national television. Nothing will help. And please get yourself a spokesperson that will say the following: "I'm not at freedom to discuss the ambassador's affairs." Neither the Bushes nor anyone associated with the Carlysle Group (those Republicans and Democrats, former Prime Ministers and Department Secretaries) can help. Out of September 11 has grown a national security bureaucracy that none of the Kingdom's money-minded "friends" can restrain. It's huge, it's powerful, and it distrusts you--the Kingdom, and the kingdom's "friends"--immensely. If that bureaucracy senses any reluctance by the Kingdom to fully serve its purposes, it will leak innuendos to the press, (as it had done in the recent past), which will beget a popular backlash against the kingdom and any politician who intervenes on its behalf. Silence is golden.

Sadly, neither this bureaucracy nor the intelligence mandarins you've trusted in the past understand our world. And yet, you and so many in Arab governments cater to these dangerous and self-styled experts and their native informants and WOGs in academia. Enough, please. I have concluded many years ago that these mandarins are incapable of thinking objectively. They are limited intellectually. They haven't understood that the era of oppressing the Arabs and wreaking havoc in their societies has passed.

If you can't fight the urge to speak, I beseech you to leak, instead. Henry Kissinger can teach you that art, and he's available, I believe. And avoid bragging to Bob Woodward at any cost. Avoid television. You're in trouble when Mark Russell, the brainy comedian, takes you on about what you say on national television, and adds a sad commentary about you and Saudi Arabia.

The American left is hardly one of your fans, either. For you've placed all your eggs in the Reagan-Bush basket, and no one at your embassy seems to make any serious and sincere outreach to the grassroots Democratic community--or to the sane Senator McCain and the old guard Republicans. In its campaign to contain the skewing of the democratic process by some corporations that are close to President Bush and to Vice-President Cheney, the left has seen in the Kingdom a corrupting element. As if the Arabs invented corruption! One recent book about the Kingdom talks about one million dollars left decades ago for a Republican presidential campaigner by a Saudi messenger. That started corruption in the United States, the author would have us believe. That author is all over the map in talks to left-leaning audiences.

The grassroots left community (that which does not hate Arabs) is genuinely concerned about democracy and the preservation of Congress' proper role in that democracy. With this in mind, many in that community haven't forgotten how you helped the Reagan administration circumvent Congress, when you accepted the proposition by then National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane for the Kingdom to finance the Contras in exchange for a shipment of Stinger missiles to Saudi Arabia. (Bob Woodward, Veil, at 351-55). And Arabs an ocean away weren't enamored by your scheming with then CIA Director William J. Casey to have Sheikh Muhammad Fadlallah, then of Hezbollah, assassinated. You and the Kingdom's intelligence services put your faith in some ruthless and ugly British mercenary to coordinate with some Lebanese (the same ones who so blindly destroyed Lebanon) to explode a car bomb in Beirut. Eighty civilians were reported killed and 200 were wounded. (Veil, at 396-397) As if that country needed any more misery!

I understand that your acceptance to help Casey was on orders by the Kingdom's government (or, more likely, its American-pleasing intelligence services.) One learns from these tragedies, and I would hope that the lessons then should've been that first, you cannot trust an American administration which intends on circumventing Congress' constitutional mandate; and second, you should seek advice from people who are close to Congress and would not compromise that branch's constitutional role in this democracy. Should the powers-that-be in the Kingdom refuse to listen to your advice, there's always available the option of resigning from the post. (I trust, unlike us mortal beings, you do not need a job for survival.)

* * * *

That Saudi Arabia helped the United States in its war on Iraq, as reported by Bob Woodward in his most recent book, is of little help to you and the Kingdom. As Mark Russell put it: Saudis attack the United States; we invade Iraq. Democratic forces in this country--many with substantial influence in Congress--are disgusted; and these forces will soon be joined by (to use the editor's description) the mothers of American children who unnecessarily died and are still to die in Iraq. The fact that the Kingdom has helped by pumping more oil and by providing access to our armed forces to invade Iraq from the Kingdom's territory can hardly impress the left and democratic forces. If anything, these forces (which may very well take over the White House) would have been more impressed by leaks from you of concern about an unnecessary war--and by recommendations from you to Crown Prince Abdullah to resist American pressure, a la Turkey.

By necessity you represent more than just Saudi Arabia. You represent Arabs, especially those who are geographically close to the misery of the Palestinians and the Iraqis. The fringe civilian elements that have taken over the Pentagon and launched a campaign to break up the Kingdom have infuriated all the Arabs along with you. We have witnessed the United States, relying on egregiously biased advise, preside over the breakup of an Arab country: Iraq. It was an imperfect state, but hardly one that needed to be smashed to pieces and laid prostate before Iran. Even those among us who didn't think much of Saddam Hussein couldn't accept the invasion by Israelis or Americans of an Arab country. How could we? How could any Arab? How could you?

These Arabs see you as catering so much to right-wing Americans (a version of whom had propagated the scheme to break apart the Kingdom) that they have no hope that you are able to represent even the smallest of their concerns. I commend your recent opening to the Palestinians. (By this, I'm referring to an event where your name was included, in the presence of a very able Hanan Ashrawi.) I assure you the American left and Democratic forces will respect this course, and I would hope you'd continue on with it. You are after all an Arab ambassador, not an extension of the sophomoric and dangerous schemes of egregiously biased right-wing lunatics.

(I agree that the American left should've given Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative for Palestinian-Israeli peace more attention; it was a worthwhile effort that the Bush administration chose to ignore at the peak of its delusion about the limitless application of American military power, and the usefulness of a war to the re-election of a President. That initiative would've possibly had a chance in this country had you and the Kingdom made it a priority and not fallen into silence about it so not to disturb President Bush's misery-laden agenda for the Middle East and for the mothers of America's children.)

Bob Woodward tells us that you gave assurances to President Bush that no one in the Arab world would rise as a result of
the invasion of Iraq. Remember the first Gulf War? How about telling the President that even the Kingdom would feel the impact of his unwise attack plan? Don't you think that the very fact that Jihadists have support in the Kingdom has something to do with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (and, by extension, the Kingdom's at times uncritical alignment with that foreign policy)? Could it be that Colin Powell is more Arab than some Saudi and Arab politicians? Frankly, I think Powell should be your only ally in this Administration; if you need more allies, and you are more comfortable with Republicans, you should then seek out Senator McCain (try getting an invitation to one of the Arab-American events in his state) and the old guard of the Republican Party; at all cost, I would avoid those in that Party who represent Arab-hating self-declared Christian Ayatollahs, and those politicians who believe in reviving crusades.

We have no illusions about most Arab leaders. But, in the name of the many Arabs like me who place some importance on appearances, I'm asking for little: that you save what honor we have left. Heed this minute example of the King of Jordan: here is a king who needs the United States much more than any other Arab leader, and has relations with Israel--yet he reacts appropriately to a White House whose behavior threatens the very stability of his kingdom and is insulting to Arabs. King Abdallah in May snubbed the American President when the latter went along with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's plan to dispossess our Palestinian brothers and sisters for the umpteenth time in less than 60 years. I'm aware that the Jordanian King probably made sure his gesture in no way signaled a total break with the Bush administration, and that a good number of his people are at various levels of "asset" to our sublime intelligence services. His gesture, nonetheless, assured some level of dignity to us Arabs. Can't the Kingdom develop a network similar to that of Jordan's in the foreign policy bureaucracy of this country? Can't it call on Jordan to integrate it into that network?

And what does it take to be a tad more cautious? I'm aware of how business is done in the Arab world and am reluctant to condemn my people's ways, since I find that the American ways are no better, what with revolving doors and corporations who have robbed the American public and their own employees of so much of their wealth and security. It would help to have less sophomoric public relations firms around your embassy and more lawyers, accountants, and adept political consultants. The Washington Post has covered thoroughly the controversy of the FBI investigation of your and the embassy's bank transactions, and it has found nothing that smacks of support for terror.

But little prepares one for the description provided by Riggs Bank in an April 8 (2004) article in the Post about a December 2003 financial transaction. To me, it read "Business as Done in Arab Countries." To Americans, though, it raised eyebrows.

* * * *

A new era is upon the Arab World, one where the United States has opted to balance Iranian power. This is such an odd formulation, since the United States is widely and supremely hated by a swelling Arab public for its uncritical support of Israel's war on the Palestinian brothers and sisters, its financing of the annexation of their lands, and for America's starving and later destruction of an Arab country. Iraq (as Saudi Arabia) was and continues to be so dear to our hearts; and it'll take a lot for the United States to make up for what it has done in the eyes of the Arab public. That public would fight to death to avoid the breakup of the Kingdom. Couldn't you have done this public a small favor and criticized the invasion, and resigned your post in protest against the Kingdom's acquiescence?

It's not too late. Iraq's unity consumes each and everyone in the Arab nation; please take steps to do your share to assure this unity, and to save the mothers of American and Iraqi children some of the tragedy and tears that are certain to come.