Hypocrisy: US take on Saudi Arabia

Fareed Zakaria Special report on Saudi Arabia 

Fareed Zakaria's report is the most comprehensive and accurate report I came across in US media. Yet there is so much that was not said. Is it ignorance or hypocrisy, I cannot say.

Every day I hear on CNN how Saudi Arabia should be a pariah state because of the assassination of Khashoggi. I wish it could be the norm. I wish the US would make China, Iran, Putin, those who killed Abu Akleh pariahs and cut all discussions and dealing with them. It will not happen because the same people calling for cutting relations with the Saudi regime are calling for an Iran deal and removing tariffs on Chinese imports and had been pandering to Putin until a few months ago.

Saudi Arabia has historically played the role of backing the status quo in the Middle East, promoting dictatorship and antidemocratic regimes. During the cold war, Saudi Arabia was the hand of US policy facing the Soviet Union and any revolution was deemed communist, whether it was ideologically socialist or just movements calling for freedom. Ronald Reagan received the Taliban in the White House and called them freedom fighters. Saudi Arabia backed them and promoted their brand of Islam encouraged by the US. 

1980s — CIA’s covert Operation Cyclone funnels weapons and money for the war through Pakistani dictator Mohammed Zia-ul Haq, who calls on Muslim countries to send volunteers to fight in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is among the thousands of volunteers.

1983 — President Ronald Reagan meets with mujahedeen leaders, calling them freedom fighters, at the White House.

The political alliance between the House of Saud - Saudi Arabia's ruling royal family - and orthodox Wahhabi clerics is as old as the nation, resulting in billions funneled to and through the Wahhabi movement. During the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, the people of the Middle East suffered from this alliance, and we never heard the rhetoric we hear today against Saudi Arabia. During the nineteen nineties extremism swept the Arab world destroying societies and hopes. 

"Less-well-funded governments and other strains of Islam can hardly keep up with the tsunami of money behind this export of intolerance," Murphy said.

The result was a Saudi society that supported the Ben Laden ideology. The House of Saud was also the enemy of Ben Laden due to their alliance with the US. 

al-Qaeda, Arabic al-Qāʿidah (“the Base”), broad-based militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s.

Al-Qaeda began as a logistical network to support Muslims fighting against the Soviet Union during the Afghan War; members were recruited throughout the Islamic world. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued to oppose what its leaders considered corrupt Islamic regimes and foreign (i.e., U.S.) presence in Islamic lands.

Yet until today we never heard an acknowledgement of the responsibility the US bears in the creation of Al Qaeda and the spread of Wahabism. On the Lead on CNN today, I just heard a survivor of 9/11 criticize Biden for meeting with Saudi Arabia's king and prince. Not a word about the role of US foreign policy and the destruction it brought about on the peoples of the Arab region.

Religious reforms are touching nothing but changing everything

Saudi Arabia is now on the road of change. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is pushing his country into major social reforms, rousing concern about a backlash from the kingdom’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment.  Young Saudis, particularly women are applauding; re-opening of movie theaters after more than 30 years; a pop musical performance by Egypt’s Cairo Opera; the inauguration of construction on an entertainment city outside Riyadh three times the size of Disney Land in Florida; and a “royal rumble” put on by World Wrestling Entertainment attended by 60,000 Saudis. 

This does not mean that Saudi Arabia is transforming into a democracy. Saudi Arabia is witnessing an unprecedented centralization of power in the hands of just one prince who brooks no opposition or even the slightest hint of criticism. So, MBS, as he is often called, is a dictator. Fine, so are many dictators the US deals with on a regular basis.

However, the social reforms will lead in the long term to a change in society, customs, and thus culture. This should be encouraged, so it is not the time today to punish Saudi Arabia for what the US encouraged it to be some time ago.

Soft diplomacy will go a long way in undoing the wrongs of the past.