SaudiPolitics is on hold, temporarily. Promise.

Dear readers:

A tragic family event has caused www.SaudiPolitics.com(SPC)to cease publication temporarily.

But personal events are dwarfed, aren't they, by the tragedy which has taken the life of over 2100 American young men and women.

Men and women who never fought sent these young people to war on a plan tainted by ideolology, which hallmark was abject mediocrity. For instance, roadside and suicide bombs were nothing new. These same bombs were credited for the Israelis' defeat in south Lebanon.

Which begs the question: Did Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals ever study that war?

One modest consolation, personal: As SPC witnesses the events unfurl in Iraq, the newsletter takes pride in its early insight about this bleak adventure. I credit this insight to the newsletter's independence. Academically, I credit it to a mix in background: International relations (theory) and area study.

Some have commented that the newsletter packs a modicum of anger. Here's why: Remember the U.S. Marines who died in Lebanon in 1983? If only you knew how many signs were evident which foretold their fate. Where were the analysts? Our government, so diffuse and torn by ideology and bureacracy, failed to read these signs.

Once again, this same incompetence is evident in the policy about the Iraq project. Once again, the policy-makers are beholden to ideological sways, even in such essential matters as the reading of the Arab opposition.

This failure is due to the U.S. government's reliance on a mix of ideological revisionists and Uncle Toms in assessing the direction and dynamics of Arab opposition. (Yes, the Arab opposition does exist and it is currently fighting in Iraq!) These people by definition could not comprehend the workings of the Arab and Muslim public--once referred to as masses.

Let me illustrate. I was born and spent my formative years in Lebanon. My mother's best childhood friend was married to an Egyptian doctor; I'll call him Dr. Shidyac. He was of Lebanese descent. His family had sought exile in Egypt during Ottoman rule. In Egypt, the Shidyac family owned large tracts of agricultural land. Then came Gamal Abdel Nasser. The doctor's family lost nearly everything, and returned to Lebanon.

One only needed to mention the name of Abdel Nasser to Dr. Shidyac to cause the good doctor a near heart attack. Do you get it? It is people like Dr. Shidyac who are advising the U.S. government on the Arab and Muslim opposition.

A variation on these are the professors--the Uncle Toms--at such institutions as the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Sadism (SAIS) who are hungry for limelight and would tell anyone in power what they want to hear. These people are shameless; too, they are dishonest. They refuse to go away, having been involved in the scheme that murdered over 2100 American young men and women.

No one ever resigns in the U.S. for dishonesty or for shame. If anything, they promote themselves!

SPC will be back as soon as the dust settles in the editor's life.

Thank you.

The Editor