Current Administration Screws The Pooch--Again!

The President of the United States barely more than an hour ago showed that he is utterly without a grip regarding the war forced upon the United States and its actual allies. Simultaneously, he demonstrated that he remains firmly in the grip of big bidness (as they say in the Lone Star State.)

According to AFP http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKQEeNk7Rr6Kn-3dxc6klGNQSpig, the Commander Guy certified that "Saudi Arabia is cooperating with efforts to combat international terrorism and that the proposed assistance will help facilitate that effort." This certification is required by law in order that American (military) "assistance" can be provided to the Kingdom Built on Sand.

Saudi Arabia may be a crucial source of oil to the US and the world generally. Its bases may be important or at least useful to force projection efforts in the Gulf region. The dealing in oil and weapons may be a fat profit cow for assorted American businesses.

But, to call Saudi Arabia an ally in the so-called Global War on Terrorism is factually incorrect. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, said barely more than a month ago that the Kingdom is delict in stopping or aiding in the stopping of financial assistance to terrorism. That's not the least of it.

Despite the issuance of a fatwa by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia prohibiting subjects of the Kingdom from leaving the country in order to pursue jihad, Wahhabism, the predominent sect of Saudi Arabia, remains the basis of Islamism. Bluntly put, this means that without a significant shift in the basic doctrine of Wahhabism, there is little chance of defeating Islamism and its armed expression Jihadism.

The Saudi government sponsors madrassas and mosques as well as websites that spread the anti-Western views and beliefs of Wahhabism. This is akin to the actions of the Communist International during the period prior to World War II. Wahhabist doctrine lays the foundations for both the Islamist view of the global caliphate under sharia and violent jihad as the necessary means of accomplishing this goal.

Unless and until the Saudi regime at the very least ceases funding, sponsoring, and extending its network of mosques and madrassas in the United States and throughout the world, there is no chance of its acting as an "ally" in the Global War on Terrorism or, to err on the side of accuracy, the Second Cold War against Islamism/Jihadism. If the Kingdom were to be a genuine ally in the current struggle it would not only stop the madrassa-mosque attack but would also cooperate fully and wholeheartedly in strangling the flow of money to the Islamist/Jihadist groups.

The probability of the Saudi regime doing this of its own volition is low.

The reason?

Easy. History. More particularly the historical tie between Wahhibism and the House of Saud. As detailed in an earlier post, the Saudi regime and the Wahhabist sect are joined at the hip and head. One cannot survive without the other.

Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the House of Saud cannot survive for long without the staunch support of the Wahhibists. The converse may not be true.

There is little doubt that many within the Wahhabist structure believe that their brand of Islam can not only survive but would prosper if the House of Saud crumbled back into the waste of dunes from which it emerged.

There are a number of indicators to back this belief. The Geek is sure that the Saudi government is not so astigmatic as to not have noticed them. As a result the Riyadh regime is limited in what it can do without unacceptable risk to itself.

The intelligence and diplomatic structures of the US are aware of this unpleasant reality. The information must have been passed up the chain of command. All the way to the Commander Guy.

Assuming a modest degree of human intelligence, the current administration should have concluded that the realities on the ground in Saudi Arabia put limits on what we could expect in terms of cooperation against Islamists/Jihadists. Those limits are real.

Those limits do not require that we overly extend ourselves to stroke the Kingdom. They do not, for example, require that we sell gigabucks worth of state-of-the-art military equipment to the Saudis. Whatever threat may be presented to the other Gulf states by Iran either today or in the next few years does not necessitate selling massive amounts of weaponry, support systems, and associated command, control, communications, and intelligence equipment to a government which may collapse before the goodies have been uncrated.

Without a real requirement for the weaponry, there is no need for the certification offered by the Commander Guy today. The matter could be allowed to drift, benignly neglected, in the stratosphere of diplomatic exchanges.

Certification is not time sensitive. Time can and should be allowed to pass. Time needs to pass in order that the Saudi government might have the opportunity to think its way through its current dilemma. Time is needed for the Saudi leaders to (perhaps and hopefully) bring more of the Wahhabist elite to realise that shifting doctrinal emphasis is in everyone's better interests.

The Saudi regime could use the time to convince the Wahhabists that without the Kingdom's money as megaphone, the doctrine of Wahhabism would still be nothing more than the visions of a wasteland preacher. They might remind the clerics that the US and the West have limits. Limits that are crossed only at peril as the admittedly lurching and shortlived, but massive oil conservation efforts following the "oil shocks" of the Seventies demonstrated. Perhaps the regime could use some time to educate the clerics about the realities of international trade, finance and economics generally as well as the central role played by the US in all of these.

Time (and some backroom American efforts) could work effective changes on Wahhabist doctrine in a few small, but critical ways. Thanks to the Decider's haste to certify there is now no time available. Bottom lines rank higher in the estimate of the neocon ninnies than time lines.

By rushing to sign an unnecessary and fact-shattering certification, the Decider has preempted the better interests of the US and its actual allies to favor the bottom line concerns of assorted corporations and stroke the ego of a King and his surrounding posse of princes whose personal and national interests show only the slightest signs of coinciding with ours.

While this blunder in no way ranks with the invasion of Iraq, it is bad enough. It is unnecessary, gratuitous. Worse, its long term effects may be as bad--or worse--than the dash to Baghdad. That will be for future historians to decide.