American taxpayers will get a bill for billions of dollars for President Bush’s war on terrorism, but what most don’t realize is that they’ll be paying billions more to help protect Osama bin Laden.
That’s because while some of our so-called allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and even said they support Bush’s campaign to eradicate those responsible, they are actually part of the terrorism problem, not the solution.
Both refuse military assistance to the U.S.-led anti-terror effort, and requests for intelligence gathering and help in collecting evidence to prosecute those responsible are being ignored.
Making matters worse, these “allies” won’t shut off bin Laden’s vital money spigot. Tens of millions flow to Al Qaida from Islamic charities, royal benefactors and various financial institutions in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf sheikdoms and Egypt.
Protests that these governments are doing all they’ve been asked is a subterfuge because Washington’s got its own “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy meaning the Bush administration knows what not to ask for. In that way, both play the cover-up game.
But there is one thing these fickle allies are giving Bush lots of: free advice. They are telling all who will listen that the real cause of Sept. 11 was American support for Israel, and only when that changes can terrorism be stopped.
With friends like these, America can’t afford many more enemies.
Sadly, the president of the United States has tacitly abetted their two-faced game by his misleading statements that both countries are cooperating, and, worse, by appearing to distance the United States from Israel.
The only real support Bush has gotten from Egypt and Saudi Arabia has been for his endorsement of Palestinian statehood. Word in Washington is that before the next big push in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell will unveil the administration’s vision of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, and Arab sources say they’ve been told to expect to like it.
Bush’s bold declaration “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” is quickly turning into a case of “that may be what I said but it’s not what I meant.”
Bush told a news conference last week that he “appreciate(s)” Saudi “actions.” Was he referring to the Saudi refusal to help wage the military war, dry up funding for the terrorists or investigate those responsible for the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks?
The New York Times published a scathing editorial attack on the Saudis’ “malignant behavior” and “tolerance for terrorism.”
Bush also declared himself “heartened” by the Organization of Islamic Countries’ “statement of support for war against terror.”
He was right when he said it “spoke volumes about the attitude of Muslim nations,” but he wouldn’t have said that if he’d read the document, which neither endorsed nor opposed his campaign. However, OIC did send him an implicit warning against targeting terrorist sponsors such as Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Most of the document that Bush praised “echoed” Yasser Arafat’s attacks on Israel, according to the Jordan Times. The Palestinian leader, using buzzwords familiar to his colleagues, called for “joint action to rid humanity once and for all of all forms of dark terrorism, occupation…and hated racial discrimination.”
The communiqué accused Israel of “state terrorism” and declared attacks on Israel are the legitimate “right of the Arab and Islamic countries including the Palestinians and the Lebanese people to resist occupation.”
Some of those “resistance” fighters blew up American barracks and embassies in Lebanon, killing servicemen and diplomats, and were responsible for hijacking airliners and kidnapping Americans and westerners for years.
Thousands of American servicemen and women went into harm’s way a decade ago to rescue Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein, but now when we ask the Saudis for help it’s another story.
Only Rudy Giuliani, the hero of ground zero, had the guts to speak truth to oil power and tell a Saudi prince what he could do with his $10 million check when it came tied to a statement virtually blaming Sept. 11 on Israel’s “slaughter” of “our Palestinian brethren.”
Notwithstanding Osama bin Laden’s televised confession, the Saudi and Egyptian statements and the OIC communiqué, the real cause of Sept. 11 is those very Arab leaders who have made violence and hatred accepted norms and preferred instruments of policy.
Even the Washington Post, considered by many to be sympathetic to the Arab cause, said in a startling editorial last week, “The largest single ’cause’ of Islamic extremism and terrorism is not Israel, nor U.S. policy in Iraq, but the very governments that now purport to support the United States while counseling it to lean on Ariel Sharon and lay off Saddam Hussein. Egypt is the leading example.”
In Egypt, American taxpayers prop up the Hosni Mubarak regime, which the Post called “autocratic…politically exhausted and morally bankrupt,” with some $2 billion annually plus top-of-the-line military technology for a country whose state-controlled media make it clear the only enemy is Israel.
But this week Mubarak, who has never faced an unrigged election and who has ruthlessly exterminated his political rivals, called Israel a “dictatorship.”
Members of Congress have complained before about Egypt, but in the end they folded under administration insistence that Mubarak is a valuable ally. There is little proof to substantiate the claim. That’s the conclusion of the Post and any other honest observer.
The president has shown courage in going after bin Laden and his terror network; now he has to demonstrate the same resolve in letting unfaithful allies know that if they want to be friends of the United States, it’s time they begin acting like friends.
And voters must begin asking their representatives in the Congress why so many of their tax dollars are going to prop up and defend these leaders who preserve, protect and defend the terror network while blaming Israel for the Sept. 11 attacks and demanding America drop its old friend and only reliable ally in that part of the world.
Silence is acquiescence.