Brace yourselves for 10 Muharram tomorrow

The Muslim feast of
Ashura
is January 30, and my bet is that the large collection of bad hombres killed yesterday near Najaf were in a staging area for a big terrorist attack on Shi'ite pilgrims going to Najaf or Kerbala, the two great Shi'a pilgrimage sites, for this gruesome festival commemorating the death of Husayn, the son of 'Ali. While living in Lebanon, I saw an Ashura street demo in South Beirut with a very mild public version of the terrific penitential self-flagellation and cutting that takes place in Shi'ite mosques.

Even NPR hints that the horrific attack on the Samarra mosque and Zarqawi's assaults on Shi'ites in Sadr City and elsewhere are instigated by an Al Qaeda campaign to foment civil war and boost the ranks of defeatists in the USA. The brunt of the attacks on Najaf and Kerbala may have been thwarted by yesterday's news of hundreds of casualties among the Sunni insurgents, but the good tidings of an Iraqi military success has been put on the back pages of the MSM outlets and TV news. East-to-get video of terror-bombings in Baghdad make front-page, top of the broadcast news. Successes in out-of-the-way places are duly noted, but buried by lurid tales of insurgent nastiness and funerals of stateside families mourning their heroic dead. At one point a few days ago, I switched from ABC to CBS to NBC and all simultaneously [I believe it was Friday night's weekend wrap-up] had stories of berieved families. AQ Agitpreppie Brian Williams had his usual shallow commentary, and the MSM campaign to discredit victory in Iraq continues...

Yes, Bush and his lieutenants botched the job, but that doesn't mean walking away before the job is finally finished. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow the Al Qaeda will still be on the job, whether we walk away or not.

Saudis Jockeying for Post-US Withdrawal Era: The BackStories Part II

Back when I was Political/Military Officer for the US Embassy in Jidda in the '70s , I was sent to study the political situation in Eastern Province, and in particular, the Shi'ite minority who actually comprised the majority in the Al-Hasa Oasis, and towns like HufHuf, where pious Shi'ites refused to allow me to photograph them. As a sort of perverse joke on the ninety-percent Sunni Saudi population [at that time], the Shi'ites occupy the real estate where a huge amount of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are located.

While I was in Dhahran to check on the Shi'ites [as a sidebar political officer for internal affairs to my main job as Pol/Mil], the US Consul General said that I had to meet a Saudi Prince who was an actual commander of a Fighter Wing for the RSAF, an unparalleled achievement for senior Saudi Royals, who normally existed at that time in otiose languorous oisivete, French for being layabouts with money.

When I met Bandar bin Sultan at his spartan office, he invited me to his home for dinner and after meeting his pregnant wife Haifa and their kids, we had dinner and then retired for orange juice and cigars for what turned out to be seven hours of what diplomats call a "tour d'horizon." Bandar is voluble and incredibly street smart with a charismatic charm that is virtually irresistable. He told me very late that evening the fact hitherto unknown to the US government that there existed a Saudi National Security Council, told me who was on it, and finally told me that he wanted to be king someday. I forwarded this to Washington in an airgram, and former Saudi and Egyptian Ambassador Hermann Eilts began a correspondence with me that turned into a friendship recently terminated by his death in Wellesley. Bandar famously went on to be a fabulously successful Saudi Ambassador to the US for over twenty years.

But that was then and this is now. Bandar himself now sits as the head of the Saudi NSC and jumping forward, the recent rapid return to Saudi Arabia by Prince Turki al-Faisal while his brother, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal lies ill means perhaps that Turki is lobbying to succeed his brother, while Bandar vies to supplant the Bani Faisal [sons of King Faisal] in the line to highest levels of internal Royal Family power and influence While I doubt that a more mature and seasoned Bandar still aspires to become King, one can surmise that his becoming Foreign Minister would be a steppingstone to the highest royal status---and I will eventually get to why that's something that may be important to the US.

[Background digression: skip if you want to cut to the chase] When you talk about the US-Saudi relationship, Saudi Oil Minister Zaki Yamani used to call it a "Catholic marriage,' full of broken hurled crockery, but fundamentally stable. However, three decades later Catholic marriages aren't what they used to be, and neither is the relationship once affirmed with the so-called Carter Doctrine, which pledged defense of Saudi Arabia if attacked, and the Reagan Corollary, which pledged defense of the Saudi Royal Family. King Abdullah has departed slightly, more by nuance than by policy, from supporting the US in every eventuality that King Fahd appeared to follow.

But King Abdullah has heart problems, and may soon be succeeded by Bandar's father, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, which would escalate Bandar's ascendancy in the Royal Family and perhaps put the sons of King Faisal, a talented group who must live more by their wits nowadays than by dynastic connections, in a permanent backseat to the chief policymakers of the KSA.

So what, you say. I beg your forbearance in letting me develop the backdrop a bit more with another digression.

And indeed, the influence of the Saudis in particular and the Arab Middle East in general is receding as Turkey is being backpedaled back into the region by its apparent rejection by the EU and its nervousness about the independent Kurdish polity in Iraq. And of course, the advent of Iran as a nuclear power would put Saudi Arabia's favorite enemy [KSA and the Shah's Iran had no diplomatic relations while I was there] in a hegemonic regional position. So the Saudi coalition of Egypt, Jordan, Sunni Iraq, the Gulfies and the Arab League becomes relatively diminished in the overall weight-class in the political boxing matches afflicting the region. But the Saudis have another weight-class when it comes to economics.

Economically, the Saudis control to a large extent the price of oil through its role of swing producer in Opec. The Saudis can and have in the past frequently moved the price downward and then let the price rise by lowering production, often at the behest of the US as in the mid-eighties and again for GHWBush's '88 election. Now King Abdullah has changed this relationship with the US dramatically as he is now allowing Opec to move out of the dollar where all oil purchases are denominated in US currency and into a "basket" of currencies which are not losing value, as the dollar is and appears set to continue to do. This is happening slowly, but a rapid withdrawal from the dollar could cause harm to the US economy. Parenthetically, the Saudis also allowed a higher oil price at the recent OPEC meeting in Abuja.

And Abdullah appears vexed by the US performance in Iraq. I recall reading that the Saudis and Gulfies and other Arabs reluctantly agreed to the US unilateral invasion of Iraq, but in a Shakespearian "if it is to be done, let it be done quickly" mode.
Three and a half years later, Abdullah sees Lebanon [where King Abdullah has close family ties] and Iraq appear ready to revert to anarchy. The Saudis would have preferred Saddam to anarchy or an absolute Shi'ite paramountcy, which could ensue if the US leaves before some final agreement or cessation of hostilities.

So is Abdullah going to revert to the Saudi semi-neutral position when it signed on to the '73 Oil Embargo to punish the US for supporting Israel? Or will he decide that the Saudis cannot depend on the US, or that US support will be too radioactive in the turbulence ensuing from a "non-precipitous" withdrawal?

Finally getting to the point, I think an interesting tea leaf to the answer may lie in who is appointed to the Foreign Minister post, Bandar or Turki. There is also the third alternative, to leave Saud acting-FonMin for as long as it takes to hammer out a decision on the candidates among the members of the senior Royals, who will finally decide.
[I have to run now, but am going to put up this post while I finish the second half and the bizarre reasoning processes one goes through when "wearing one's Saudi hat."]

Pernicious Meddling by Democratic Senators on Lebanon

The Economist has a good backgrounder on Lebanon. This country is in the process of seeing the democratic reforms of the Cedar Revolution undone by the creeping "direct action" of a street mob in Beirut. And the Western media ignore this attempt by a minority of 40% to seize the government by a coup de pouce while they are in a tizzy of fits and snits because President Bush has put his speech on Iraq off until January.

Enter stage left a bumbling second-rate double-digit IQ misfit from Florida who happens to have stumbled into being re-elected by facing a less-than-competent Republican. The photo of Sen. Bill Nelson sitting with Bashar Assad is comic, in an opera bouffe fashion. As the term implies, both of these fellows are buffoons, but Assad is a murderous buffoon who killed Rafiq Hariri and is exerting every effort to halt the UN Investigative Committee's Inquiry by trying to overthrow the Lebanese government. I wonder if Bill the bland buffoon asked Assad the killer buffoon whether he had anything to do with it? Billy did admit to getting Assad to say he's interested in working with the US on the Iraq border and Iraqi internal security issues. But on the only issue that Bashar has any influence over, this criminal told Nelson that Lebanon and Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas were none of the US's business.

The Wall Street Journal has a serious article which makes a case for Congress getting more involved, but unfortunately, Nelson isn't the only buffoon wanting to visit Damascus. A real parade of fools, three more of the most mendacious slippery mike-hogging types in Congress, Sens. Dodd, Specter, and of course, J[ust] F[or] Kerry are eager to demonstrate their heft and gravitas by going to Damascus, getting the photo-op sitting next to the stick-insect [can't wait to see the bouffant Kerry and crew-cut baby-Assad photo], and then coming back to be interviewed by "serious" journalists like Baby-Face Russert and Earnest Brian Williams. And don't forget Matt Lauer.

These solons are ostensibly going to Damascus about Iraq, but the Arab world will interpret their visits as paying homage to Assad, thereby increasing this incompetent blustering nitwit's prestige and emboldening him to more excesses in Lebanon, the only place that Assad has real influence.

So serial recidivist megalo-mikehogs like Dodd, Nelson, Specter and Hairdo are going to visit an all-but-open-and-shut-case murderer of the country next door. And giving American foreign influence in the region an even less enviable profile.

President Bush and Condi Rice are going to have to exercise what little political clout they have left, and use it wisely, to restrain these nitwits on their self-promoting junkets.

Ah, but there's always Dennis Kucinich. That photo-op will be precious as this five-foot wonder stands next to six-six stick-insect Assad!