Hummers Here, Hummers There

May 25, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
www.nytimes.com

In the wake of the recent terrorist bombings in Riyadh,
Saudi officials seem to have - pardon the expression -
gotten religion. They say they now understand that suicide
terrorism in the name of Islam is as much a threat to them
as it is to the open societies of the West. This time, they
insist, they're going to crack down on their extremists. I
hope so, but I fear we have a deeper problem with Saudi
Arabia. I fear it is the Soviet Union. I fear it is
unreformable.

I fear that the ruling brothers of Saudi Arabia are like
the Soviet Politburo. I fear the 6,000 Saudi princes are
like the Communist Party Central Committee. I fear that
Riyadh is Red Square. I fear the Al-Sauds used Islamism to
unite 40 fractious tribes in Arabia the way Lenin used
Communism to unite 100 fractious nationalities across
Russia. And I fear that Osama bin Laden is just the evil
version of Andrei Sakharov - the dissident Soviet scientist
who exposed the system from within. Sakharov was exiled to
Gorky. Bin Laden was exiled to Kabul. And both systems meet
their end where? In Afghanistan.

Even if this parallel is off, and the Saudi system could be
reformed without collapsing, I fear that the Saudi ruling
family has become too dysfunctional, divided and insecure
to undertake this task. Surely one test is whether Saudi
officials and spiritual leaders can condemn Islamic suicide
terrorism, not just when it is against them, but when it is
against people of other faiths - no matter what the
context. Saudi Arabia's neighbors - Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar
and Oman - are experimenting with elections, a freer press,
women's rights and free trade with America. Saudi Arabia,
by contrast, has been drifting under an ailing king, trying
to buy a different perception of itself with better
advertising rather than with deeper reform.

Frankly, I have a soft spot for the de facto Saudi ruler,
Crown Prince Abdullah, who is a man of decency and
moderation. But he's too nice for his own good. He needs to
break heads at home, force some sustained reforms on his
religious establishment, revive his own peace initiative
and begin to empower his women - because women's
empowerment is the best antidote to extremism.

The problem with Saudi Arabia is not that it has too little
democracy. It's that it has too much. The ruling family is
so insecure, it feels it has to consult every faction,
tribe and senior cleric before making any decision. This
makes Saudi Arabia a very strange autocracy: it's a country
where one man makes no decisions.

If this continues, we must protect ourselves - by telling
the Saudis, and ourselves, the truth.

In private, Bush aides have been fuming: The U.S. gave the
Saudis intelligence warnings before the recent attacks, but
they took no steps to deter them. Publicly, though, the
Bush team bites its tongue. We never talk straight to Saudi
Arabia, because we are addicted to its oil. Addicts never
tell the truth to their pushers.

If we were telling the Saudis the truth, we would tell them
that their antimodern and antipluralist brand of Islam -
known as Wahhabism - combined with their oil wealth has
become a destabilizing force in the world. By financing
mosques and schools that foster the least tolerant version
of Islam, they are breeding the very extremists who are
trying to burn down their house and ours.

But we also need to tell ourselves the truth. We constantly
complain about the blank checks the Saudis write to buy off
their extremists. But who writes the blank checks to the
Saudis? We do - with our gluttonous energy habits, renewed
addiction to big cars, and our president who has made
"conservation" a dirty word.

In the wake of the Iraq war, the E.P.A. announced that the
average fuel economy of America's cars and trucks fell to
its lowest level in 22 years, with the 2002 model year.
That is a travesty. No wonder foreigners think we sent our
U.S. Army Humvees to control Iraq, just so we could drive
more G.M. Hummers over here. When our president insists
that we can have it all - big cars, big oil, lower taxes,
with no sacrifices or conservation - why shouldn't the
world believe that all we are about is protecting our right
to binge?

And so the circle is complete: President Bush won't tell
Americans the truth, so we won't tell Saudis the truth, so
they won't tell their extremists the truth, so they can go
on pumping intolerance and we can go on guzzling gas.
Someday, our kids will condemn us for all of this.   


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