New Nazis

(12) Oil

During the first half year of his son's Administration, the elder Bush picked up a phone twice to reassure Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi-Arabia, that his son's heart was in the right place when it came to dealing with the Middle East, reported Jane Perlez in The New York Times (July 15, 2001). Twice the former president had intervened in a critical foreign policy area. Prince Abdullah had complained, that the junior Bush was far too close to Ariel Sharon. Dad told the Saudi royal not to worry, his son was going to do the right thing. The New York Times added, that Dad had further assured the Crown Prince that his son had a true grasp of the Middle East situation. One dreads to think of what the Saudi ruler must have concluded from that telephone conversation. In the mean time, no one in America dares even to think about the question of how much Dad is still involved in affairs of state officially conducted by junior.

Given the disparity in experience between father and son in foreign affairs, ‘it was a natural instinct for the father to guide his son informally,’ reported miss Perlez. After all, Dad made foreign affairs a sort of hallmark of his own presidency. Therefore, Dad continues to receive CIA briefings on all major issues on the world scene. He even requests this information on a far more frequent basis than other living former presidents. At Langley they joke about them as ‘president daddy's daily report.’ Jean Becker, current chief of staff of Bush I told The New York Times that the father was ‘not comfortable’ to talk about

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phone calls to his friends. ‘The son's staff at the White House, does not return phone calls when reporters make efforts to discover to what extent father and son consult on matters of urgency in foreign affairs.’

It is well known, that the top echelon of the Bush II government, including the offices of vice-president Cheney and secretary of state Powell, former aides of Daddy are sprinkled through the present foreign policy machinery. General Brent Scowcroft, for instance, chairman of Warren Rudman, has also returned to the Administration of junior as chairman of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The general had been criticizing the son of his former boss for letting Arab friends down during the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He was first invited in July 2001 to the Bush summer home at Kennebunkport, Maine. There he was assessed once more by Daddy, after which reporters were told that he too, was returning to Washington to assist the son.

The Bush clan goes out of its way to hide from the public, to what extent father and son decide between themselves what is best for America and the world. The New York Times reported likewise, that after junior was in office five months, Daddy sent him a report drawn up by Korean expert, Donald P. Gregg, advising the Bush II Administration to keep the US, door to North Korea open. Not too long afterward, junior announced in his paranoid 2002 State of the Union Address, that the US was threatened by an Axis of Evil. According to CIA estimates, North Korea and possibly Iraq could have missiles capable of hitting the American mainland by 2015 (The Economist, February 2, 2002).

Six months after Dad dispatched his ideas on the Middle East to his son, George Jr. delivered his by now notorious speech to the world that an Axis of Evil was threatening world peace. Scare tactics represent a classic trick to get public support. Hitler and Goebbels were masters at this game. To avoid anxiety, crucial portions of awareness are being closed off. Psychologist Daniel Goleman put it this way, ‘We tune out, we turn away, and we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth.’ (Id.: Vital Lies, Simple Truths, id. p.p. 244). But when the great leader of the free world suffers from this kind of cloudiness of mind, all of us are in trouble, and in mortal danger. No imaginary Axis of Evil threatens mankind or the survival of the human race. It is the defunct modus operandi of junior's brain that represent a deadly peril to all of humanity at the beginning of the 21^st century. Junior even overruled his Dad on what to do in North Korea.

Paul Krugman commented in The New York Times (August 7, 2001), that Bush's heart belongs like that of his Dad to those who sell oil. In 1980 Saudi Arabia was still one of the richest countries in the world. Those were the days that Riyadh constructed a 20 billion dollar gargantuan airport, a third of which was immediately moth balled.

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The Saudi princes felt that the port of entrance to the kingdom should be able to compete with New York or Tokyo. Still, Saudi Arabia remains the world's largest petroleum exporter. What the House of Saud earns yearly in oil exports is about equal to what Americans spend yearly on cigarettes. The 5.000 or so princes and the great merchant families, like the bin Laden's, are indeed rich beyond the dream of avarice. But the kingdoms per head income is just a little higher than Mexico's. On the whole, the oil income for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has dwindled from a peak of 150 Billion in 1980 to an average of 80 billion in the 1990s (The Economist, March 23, 2002).

The political situation in Arab nations in the 21^st Century too often resembles the era of 19^th century colonialism. The US, as the big powerful bully using superior military power to tell the weaker nations what is good for them and whom they should choose as their leaders. The British in India and the Dutch in Indonesia used to seek close cooperation with Indian Maharajah's and Javanese sultans and princes. The British first, followed by the Americans, did the same in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia was the only modern Muslim state in the region that was created by Jihad. In 1902, Saudi Arabia's founding father, Abdul Azis ibn Saud led 40 followers in a daring raid on Riyadh. His family had been linked to puritan Wahhabi clerics since the 18^th century. Only in 1925 did the holy cities of Mecca and Medina fell to Saudi royals. Today 16 million barrels of oil leave the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. Gulf oil, including that from Iran and Iraq, accounts for 40 percent of global trade in oil. While most reserves will last for another 25 years, oil from the Gulf region is expected to last for another 100 years.

Apart from the Saudi royals, the West deals with Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad as-Sabah of Kuwait. In Bahrain rules Sheikh Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, in Oman Sultan Qaboos, in Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and in the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan. The Gulf's princes, princesses, sheikhs and sheikhas, and often their quite distant relatives, continue to enjoy perks of free travel on national airlines, free utilities and ownership of prime property. Most of the Gulf's royal clans have amassed large, and sometimes colossal fortunes, at the expense of the masses.

I lectured in the United States during the second half of the past century for W. Colston Leigh of New York on subjects like ‘The slow death of colonialism’, based on data I assembled during reporting from Afro-Asian countries between 1950 and 1990. The petroleum oriented Bush clan seems to have missed the point that the days of privilege and exploitation by western imperialists in developing lands are a thing of the past. Where they are still in operation they are surely on the way out. Neither does one have to be an expert or a clairvoyant to understand, that new generations of educated Arabs, some of them hav-

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ing attended US colleges and universities, will certainly insist on the further democratization of their homelands. The Arab puppets of the Bushes and the Cheneys in the Middle East are walking on their last legs. Hence, it is unwise and short sighted to put one's eggs in Arab royal baskets. Yet, Bush II seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the European imperialists when they failed in the 20^th century to interpret history correctly.