A Bush Family Face-Off on Saudi Arabia

The sharp quarrel between the two Bushes over the wisdom of attacking Saddam Hussein is much more than just a disagreement over policy for the Middle East. It reflects radically divergent concepts of strategy and energy economics. There is even a basic difference in cultural values. But the real fork in the road for the two Bushes is that, when it comes to the subject of Iraq, their disagreement is really about Saudi Arabia.

Former President George Bush and his compatriots not only consider the Saudi ruling family one of the most important allies of the U.S., but they actually have a Saudi-centered view of the Middle East. Therefore they vehemently oppose a war to remove Hussein because their sources, chiefly Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, longtime Saudi ambassador to Washington, tell them that the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, and other prudent members of the family are terrified of the Arab and Muslim reaction if bombs start falling on Baghdad.

The Saudis have a point. Having indoctrinated their population in the strictest variety of Islamic fundamentalism, one that prohibits any form of amity with Christians or Jews (pagans must convert or die), they are of course bitterly criticized for relying on the protection of the “Christian” U.S., which supports Israel--a.k.a. the Jews--and which just recently defeated the impeccably fundamentalist Taliban of Afghanistan.

Hussein was never religious and certainly is no fundamentalist, but in recent years he has stressed his Islamic identity more and more. His speeches are now filled with invocations to Allah and quotes from the Koran.

If the U.S. now attacks him--almost certainly with the help of non-Arab Kurdish and Turkoman militias--both Arab and Muslim fury will be aroused against the Americans and, by extension, the American-protected Saudi family.

While the foreign minister and other top princes keep saying that Saudi Arabia will not allow its territory or bases to be used for any American war against Hussein, that only slightly limits the damage. Besides, their enemies simply do not believe the Saudis, and with good reason: It is just not credible that U.S. forces and logistic support on Saudi bases would remain passive amid the exigencies of war.

There is worse. Any U.S. war against Hussein would be fought under the banner of democracy. Both U.S. officials and Iraqi exiled leaders already have declared that their aim is to replace Hussein’s dictatorship with a democratic and federal parliamentary republic. That frightens the Saudis--who operate a family dictatorship without even the facade of a popular assembly--and makes Bush senior and his colleagues very uncomfortable. As Americans, they cannot speak out against democracy, but in the 1991 Gulf War, at Saudi insistence, they refused to allow any mention of it in the propaganda beamed to Iraq. The crowd around Bush senior still fears that democracy is a threat in the Middle East because it would allow fundamentalists to come to power; “better the princes we know” is their slogan.

Why is Saudi Arabia so valuable an ally in the eyes of Bush senior and his men? For them the answer is too obvious to be worth discussing: oil--or more precisely the unique ability of Saudi Arabia to pump extra oil when the price rises too much, thus safeguarding the world economy from another round of inflation. Almost as valuable is the Saudi ability to cut back production to drive up prices when they fall too much, endangering the economic stability of all countries that rely primarily on oil exports. Oil is produced in many countries these days, but only the Saudis control the price of oil, and therefore of energy worldwide.

President George W. Bush and his closest advisors see the cheap oil of Arabia as the greatest disincentive to the development of alternative sources of energy, including new oil outside the Middle East--in Alaska, for example. Instead of valuing the Saudi policy of keeping oil below $30 per barrel, they see it as a frustrating obstacle to any rational energy policy. And, of course, it reduces the earnings of Texan and other domestic oil producers.

Since Sept. 11, Bush junior and his camp have received an entire education in how Saudi oil revenue is spent: in part for the profligate luxuries of more than 5,000 princes with their large families and in part to operate Islamic centers and madrasas (Islamic schools) around the world that propagate the most extreme fundamentalism--the creed of Osama bin Laden.

Bush senior and friends are not much concerned with religion and still think it perfectly natural for the Saudis to promote their creed, whatever it is. Bush junior is a devoted Christian by all accounts, does pay attention to religious matters and is therefore very conscious of the wide gap between the fanatical, hate-filled fundamentalism that the Saudis have been exporting and the milder doctrines of traditional Islam that it is displacing with disastrous results.

Even the princely luxuries are far from harmless. While the invalid King Fahd flies around with more than 300 servants, his own cars, food and water, and other lesser princes have immense villas with solid-gold doorknobs and such (one has his own fire brigade), Saudi Arabia is becoming an increasingly poor country. Unemployment is more than 20%, and there is a growing problem of outright deprivation, even hunger. That is the greatest threat to the political equilibrium of the country and of Arabia as a whole.

Bush senior’s camp views the Saudi ruling family as the key to stability, but his son’s followers increasingly disagree. They are not eager to see the Saudis overthrown, but they now believe that the Saudis’ blind greed and overt profligacy are undermining their rule and that, in any case, U.S. policies should not be inhibited by Saudi needs.

Above all, there is a difference in strategic concepts. Bush senior and his followers compare the certain costs, high risks and uncertain benefits of a war against Hussein to conclude that it should not be fought, especially because it risks a Saudi collapse. In business terms, they see war as a losing proposition.

By contrast, Bush junior and cohorts are not planning a war against Hussein in the hope of achieving any positive gains but rather to avoid the catastrophic losses of another Sept. 11. They are convinced that Hussein has refused to allow U.N. inspectors--and paid the huge price of years of United Nations’ sanctions--to accumulate biological, chemical and radiological weapons because he wants to use them.

Intelligence profiles show that Hussein’s driving motivation is revenge, and while he has a long list of other enemies he would like to obliterate, the Americans are at the top. The Kuwaitis and Saudis, by the way, easily outrank the Israelis on that list. Because Bush junior is now convinced that Hussein will attack one day unless he is attacked first, he sees only danger and no compelling advantage in waiting.

Having presided impotently over the Sept. 11 catastrophe, he is determined to avoid a repetition--at all costs, including the survival of the Saudi regime that his father views so highly.

There is also the cultural factor. By all appearances, Bush senior positively enjoys spending time with the graciously hospitable, if not too bright, Bandar, as well as other Saudi princes. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security advisor to the elder Bush, is a devotee of high-altitude hiking in the costly elegance of Aspen, where Bandar owns an immense parody of a Swiss chalet. And Bandar is generous: He gives out Rolex watches as tips (he once embarrassed the staff of CNN’s “Crossfire” by passing them by the handful to junior aides and camera crews). One assumes that Saudi generosity toward political consultants, such as the highly respected Scowcroft Associates, is of greater dimensions than a mere handful of $5,000 Rolex watches.

Bush junior, by contrast, does not go to Aspen. He seems immune to its stylish attractions, preferring the plain comforts of his far-from-luxurious Crawford ranch. To be sure, Bandar has been there, but not as often as Israeli visitors.

Some, inevitably, prefer to see the Iraq dispute between father and son in terms of rival conspiracies: international industrialists and the oil interests on one side, the Zionists on the other. There may be something to that, but not much. The most bitter and influential opponents of the Saudis in the U.S. are not Jews or Zionists but rather the many U.S. military officers and diplomats who have served in Saudi Arabia and who despise the princes and abhor the fanaticism they propagate.

In any case, as far as President Bush is concerned, the debate is over.

He has heard his father and knows the views of his father’s former officials. He has made his decision: Saddam Hussein must go, even if the Saudis go down with him.