Empire Notes

Right-wingers are not the only ones using crude racist arguments for political gain.

When John Edwards was asked in the vice presidential debate about Israel and Palestine, his answer gave no hint that there was such a thing as the Palestinian people. There are a bunch of suicide bombers who kill Israeli children. And Israel must protect its children. No mention of the occupation, much less that, since September 2000 Israelis have directly killed five times as many Palestinian children as vice versa, not even counting the malnutrition caused by the “closures.”

And John Kerry raised the specter of Middle Easterners coming across our southern border, thus necessitating its further militarization. After all, we don’t want Middle Easterners here in America, do we?

But the way it usually manifests is Saudi-bashing, one of the favorite sports of liberals. Moore's photo montage of oily, hook-nosed Saudis early in the Fahrenheit 9/11 was blatant anti-Semitism; imagine the reaction had it been oily, hook-nosed Jews. And his suggestion that Bush’s war on Iraq, a war the al-Sauds wanted desperately to avoid, occurred because he is in the pocket of the al-Sauds, was pure racist scapegoating. And his avoidance of mentioning Israel, whose connection to the war is rather greater, is a clear racist double standard.

John Kerry does the same thing, although much more subtly. One of his commercials, Innovation, concludes with the line, "I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family. I'm John Kerry and I approve this message because no young American should be held hostage to our dependence on Mideast oil." And he mentions the same thing in nearly every stump speech.

Reducing America's dependence on oil, domestic or foreign, is a great idea. And if Kerry just focused on that, it would be great. But the United States has no specific dependence on Saudi oil. Even in July 2004, with Iraqi oil production still severely impacted by the regime change, Saudi Arabia accounted for about 14% of total U.S. oil imports. Middle East oil in total was less than a quarter.

Western Europe usually gets about 30-40% of its imports from the Persian Gulf; Japan gets 70-80%. Oddly, this dependence has not recently forced the EU and Japan to invade countries and force regime changes in the Middle East, but, say Kerry and others, it requires the United States to do so.

Saudi Arabia has 25% of the world’s oil reserves and its oil will remain crucial to the world market unless world consumption is drastically cut. And, contrary to much liberal opinion, the special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia usually involves making them serve “our” interests rather than vice versa, as they did before the war on Iraq by throwing in their full spare capacity for oil production to avert potential shortfalls.

In fact, the soldiers in Iraq are not being held hostage to the Saudi royal family’s aims, but to those of the U.S. government.

The other facet of the Saudi-bashing is hinting that the Saudi government attacked us on 9/11. The 9/11 commission found no evidence of this, although there is still much to be investigated. Some dissident members of the royal family, who believe in Wahhabism rather than decadent excess, may have covertly given aid to bin Laden. There is no serious reason to believe that those in power were involved. Most of the “evidence” usually given involves continuing ties to the Taliban or to the ISI, groups that the United States itself was allied with or favorable to only a few years back.

It is true that the Saudis have been extremely dilatory in cooperating with U.S. investigative efforts. The reason is that the United States has made Saudi cooperation difficult to impossible because of high-profile support for Israel and the inflammatory occupation of Iraq.

It's impossible to defend the Saudi royal family; they are indefensible. But bashing them is exactly what the neoconservatives want; Richard Perle and Michael Moore agree. The reason is that the neocons would love to implement their neocolonial plans everywhere in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. It's not likely to happen because of their sheer incompetence, but fostering belligerent anti-Arabism detracts from the real central imperative in dealing with the “war on terrorism” – rolling back U.S. imperialism.