George Bush gets a Clue

[Coyote]

...Or at least, someone in Bush's advisory boards.

Bush hit the nail on the head when he declared in his recent speech that "sixty years of excusing tyranny in the Arab world has not brought us security" --(paraphrased).

When I was in Israel it was impossible to ignore how many of the people I met there (both Israeli activists and Arabs) who expressed outrage at US policy for promoting liberty and freedom while propping up shitstains like the Saudi royal family. Liberty was for Americans, not for the people chafing under the regimes there.

But the real insight came when he said that "Modernization does not mean Westernization-- it could not and should not look like us". That was a big boost for the reformers and the people who would like to rethink the process of Ijtihad, or Hadith Criticism, and open the doors to reform Islamic thought.

The Ijtihad movement flies in the face of the Salafiyya movement, which wants to take Islam back to the time of purity, etc. The Ayatollahs and foks like Osama, the Taliban, etc, are from the Salafiyya train of thought-- and they attack the Ijtihadists as "pro-Western" stooges. It has been hard for moderates to gain foothold in the universities and madrassas because of this criticism. The best thing Bush could do was cut this millstone loose from the necks of the reformists.

He also pointed out that "Islam has a democratic tradition" which is also true, but unpracticed. The Sunni branch, anyway, believes that leadership in Islam goes to whoever is most qualified and whoever has the backing of the people. In Shia'a tradition, it goes only to who is descended from Mohommed, and the Mullahs and Ayatollahs read the Qur'An and interpret it for the masses. (Sunni tradition encourages the people to read it for themselves).

Democracy is not against Islam, as some of the self-appointed Jihadist 'leaders' would have one believe-- it is not a Western import. If the reformers can soak this up and run with it, without the image of being attatched to the West, they may be able to introduce some much-needed reforms.

Either someone did their fucking homework, or this was a random piece of policy/rhetoric that turned out to be right on the mark.

[MKSheppard]

Our Saudi friends get a lesson
By Wesley Pruden

Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the misfortunes of your enemies, is not nice. It's not compatible with either Jewish ethics or Christian morality. Principled atheists know better.

But the Saudis, who nurtured 15 of the 19 men who plotted and executed the outrage of September 11 that we can never forget or forgive, can't expect us not to notice that they're getting theirs. Just deserts in the desert, an insensitive man might be tempted to say.

Tempting or not, we must stifle the urge to take pleasure in these just deserts. The anger and consternation in the Arab world should be enough to satisfy the appetite for schadenfreude.

But neither ethics nor morality requires anyone to reprise in paraphrase that famous headline in Paris on September 12 to say that "we are all Arabs and Muslims now." This would no doubt insult the Arabs, anyway, and much of the rest of the Islamic world. The Arab anger and Muslim consternation in the wake of the terrorist rage in Riyadh was expended not as an expression of common humanity, it is important to note, but in narrow ethnic and religious terms: How could Muslim terrorists have slain brother and sister Muslims? This is hardly the stuff of solidarity.

Sherard Cowper-Coles, the wonderfully named British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, misses the point, too, in denouncing the murder of 17 Saudis and the wounding of dozens of others (including Americans and Englishmen) as "senseless." He couldn't understand why Islamists targeted a compound of Muslims when there are still plenty of Jews and Christians for them to kill.

It wasn't "senseless" at all, from the point of view of al Qaeda, which is determined to drive out the West and all the Western influences of tolerance, justice, mercy, kindness, compassion and forbearance — the qualities taught over the centuries by generations of hated Jewish and despised Christian holy men. You let in a little civilization and you never know where it will lead.

But it might be a mistake of tactics. Ordinary Muslims in the streets, that famously seething mosh pit of public opinion so beloved by Western diplomats, politicians and pundits, suggest that the Riyadh bombing was too far over the top even for Islamic taste. "Al-Qaeda is now bombing ordinary Arab people who had been their staunchest supporters," says Malik al- Suleimany, a prominent pundit in Oman. "This has undoubtedly dented public opinion toward [al-Qaeda]." Newspapers in Beirut splashed photographs of two dead Lebanese children across their front pages, clucking disapproval.

Such compassion, even if compassion driven by the sacrifice of their own, will undoubtedly subside with the next cycle of dead Israelis in Jerusalem or American GIs in Baghdad. What is more encouraging is the early evidence that the deadly assault on a posh residential compound in Riyadh is an answered wake-up call. The Saudi government, which couldn't be bothered to help so long as the terrorists were killing merely Christian women and Jewish children, are cooperating now. They're scared. The creeps and jitters that began with the May 11 attack on foreigners working in Saudi Arabia have given way to genuine fright and authentic panic, enough to make the king and all the princes, Wahhabi or not, wet their royal pants.

"It was a staggering experience for them to see that their own capital was vulnerable," says a senior U.S. official, a close observer of the Saudi royals. "Their own security services had been penetrated."

The Saudi security forces, though riddled by al Qaeda sympathizers if not actual followers, are sharing intelligence now with the CIA, whose agents have been in the desert kingdom since early summer. This is an improvement, modest as it is, over the silly Saudi public-relations campaign meant to persuade Western opinion that the Saudis are upstanding and law-abiding citizens of the modern world.

Deathbed conversions, even of princes, are better than nothing, of course, but always suspect. If the Saudi royals can get a promise from Osama bin Laden that he will go back to killing only Christians and Jews, the Saudis will spike the new policy of cooperating with Washington in a Manhattan minute. Fear is persuasive, but subsides quickly.

The more encouraging prospect is that George W. Bush may finally be getting over his family's famous infatuation with the Saudis, recognizing the Saudi "reforms" for what they are. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," he said only last week. "Because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Hear, hear. Better late than never.