Oil and blood: Saudi Arabia and Iraq: "Saudi Arabia is the key to containing the terrorist menace, assuring stability in the Gulf, and keeping the oil flowing at a reasonable price.".

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: Worldview

THE WAR IN IRAQ is not about democracy and never did concern "weapons of mass destruction." It is about U.S. national security interests in the Gulf that revolve around two issues: the free flow of oil from the region at a reasonable price and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the curtailment of funds supporting terrorism and the export of Wahhabism, the intolerant form of Islam that had its birth in Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Iraqi war is about dealing with Saudi Arabia.

The imminent threat of "weapons of mass destruction" from Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been eliminated in the first Gulf war almost 15 years ago, yet was used as a pretext for the present conflict. Many in the intelligence community knew this, but nevertheless were obliged to fall on their swords. The current rhetoric is about "democracy," but democracy--along with its prerequisites of civil society and the rule of law--cannot readily be imposed externally. Democracy has been used by the Administration to make U.S. actions in Iraq more palatable to the world community.

In discussing U.S. policy in Iraq, keep in mind the distinction between policy and strategy. U.S. policy goals are, as stated above, the flow of oil at a reasonable price and the curtailment of terrorism and the spread of intolerant Islam; how they are achieved, whether through diplomacy, war, or other means, is a matter of strategy. Establishing a "democracy" or some form of autocracy subservient to U.S. interests--a goal that no American politician would espouse openly--is a strategy choice, not one of policy. The purpose of this strategy is to bring pressure on the Saudis to achieve our policy goals.

From the Saudi perspective, the U.S. approach to achieving its policy goals by removing Saddam Hussein and the Baathist regime, followed by a chaotic occupation of Iraq, only seems to provide a training ground for anti-Saudi jihadists and, perhaps far worse, has altered the balance of power in the Gulf region between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in favor of the Shiites. The only consistent explanation is that this was the U.S.'s ultimate purpose all along.

Islamic terrorism is the most recent manifestation of the reaction to the fall of the great Muslim empires to the West. The last was the Ottoman Empire that was dismembered following World War I. Its sovereign ruled not only as a sultan over a specific state but, as the caliph, the head of Sunni Islam. As caliph, he was the last of a line that traced itself back almost 1,300 years to the Prophet Muhammad. Today, with its poor governance, high birth rate, and low productivity, the Muslim world is falling ever further behind the West. Islamists find fertile ground for their claim that restoration of the caliphate will restore the greatness of the past--a past which, unlike the peoples of the West who often do not know their own history, Muslims have not forgotten. Islamists feel that the failures of the Muslim world are due to excessive modernization. They see their primary task as reinstating a purely Islamic way of life--although that does not necessarily rule out the benefits of modern technology.

Some Islamist groups have been singled out for explicit condemnation by the Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie: the Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt, "the blood-soaked combatants of the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, the Shiite revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban. Poverty is their great helper, and the fruit of their efforts is paranoia. This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, 'infidels,' for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world." To those who say that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, Rushdie answers, "Of course this is 'about Islam.' The question is, what exactly does that mean?"

Al Qaeda, created around 1990 by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts after the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan, credits itself not only with defeating the USSR in Afghanistan but also with the collapse of the Soviet Union. From this perspective, taking on the U.S. is not as silly as it appears.

The U.S. is viewed as degenerate and demoralized. Significantly, Islamists call America the "Great Satan," as did Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. Great Satan should not be thought of in Christian terms since, for Muslims, it hits the connotation of weakness. Satan is a seducer and, for Al Qaeda, it is the seduction by America that represents the greatest threat to its brand of Islam.

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