A Moderate Man

And we lost Davy in the Korean War
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore
--Hello In There, John Prine

_________

This week we at Ranger feel particularly like calling a spade a spade. Looking below the platitudes to see where peace and goodwill really do, and do not, reside.

Another attempt at a feel good story that wasn't was the pardon issued a week ago by Saudi King Abdullah for the Girl of Qatif. The 19-year-old woman was brutally gang-raped by seven men and sentenced by the court in our "mainstream" and "moderate" friend Saudi Arabia to 200 lashes for. . . her crime.

The Arab News explained the court's argument, "that it was the girl’s fault in the first place that (the rape) happened and none of that would have happened if she had not met with the non-related male friend (King Abdullah Pardons Qatif Girl)." You have not come a long way, baby, in many parts of the world.

Of course the U.S. State Department, in its typical stupefied posture, voiced "astonishment" at the sentence but stopped short of actually calling for it to be overturned, doing a Kofi Annan better than Annan himself. World outrage was probably the operative agent in Abdullah's intervention.

The WaPo ran a good editorial taking a broad view of that country in a piece on the opening of the Annapolis Peace Talks last month (Saudi Whiplash; A regime that inflicts medieval punishment on rape victims is celebrated in Annapolis) :

"Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, basked in praise and attention from the Bush administration at last week's Annapolis peace conference. He was thanked repeatedly for deigning to attend the kickoff of Israeli-Palestinian talks; national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said he told the prince that "I know it must have been a very difficult decision." Reporters took note as Prince Saud lambasted Isreal and explained why he could not possibly stoop to shake the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

What a fawning toady Mr. Hadley must be. Saudi Arabia's extremism is concretized by the fact that its foreign minister will not even shake the hand of a fellow diplomat.

It is another Sam Kinison moment: "People, Saudi Arabia does not even recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist, yet you have its representative at the opening ceremony of its peace conference -- for what? To put bad mojo on the event?"

Al-Faisal does not shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, as Laura Bush would not nod or make eye contact with Iranian President Ahmadinejad at the United Nations. Bad citizens of the world, all.

Mrs. Bush is a Christian lady, and as such, her dogma espouses the belief that all men are brothers. If she cannot manage even a courteous nod recognizing a head of state at an official function, how do we have a chance with anybody?

This is not statesmanship, which should be staid and polite, if only on the surface. Failure to acknowledge another person as a fellow human being is not conducive to negotiated settlements.

"Six years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was widely acknowledged in and outside the Bush administration that Saudi Arabia -- the homeland of 15 of the 19 hijackers, along with Osama bin Laden -- was a threat as well as an oil supplier to the United States. Its embrace of extremist Islamic ideology, its vigorous efforts to spread that creed throughout the Middle East and beyond and its sponsorship of groups like the Taliban were a far more direct cause of anti-Western terrorism than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Yet America remains placated at the pathologizing of Israel as the wellspring of its problems in the Middle East. And some actually court the pipe dream that somehow, if Israel were just gone, so too would go all other enmities. Good luck.

"Most of the suicide bombers in Iraq have been Saudis. Yet in the last year. . .the Bush administration has abruptly returned to describing Saudi Arabia as a "mainstream" and "moderate" state and a staunch U.S. ally. Once again the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is treated as the Middle East's most critical problem and Prince Saud as a statesman who is to be congratulated for appearing in the same room as an Israeli."

If Saudi Arabia is "moderate" and "mainstream," than my college dictionary is superannuated. Or maybe things are just skewed in Bushworld.

If we are fighting to make Afghanistan and Iraq moderate by the standard of our ostensible Saudi Arabian friends, then we are headed down the wrong road.