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| Author: | Steven Simon, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
|---|
May 20, 2007
American Prospect
In July 2002, a RAND corporation research analyst named Laurent Murawiec gave a briefing on Saudi Arabia to the Defense Policy Board, a blue-ribbon group of former secretaries of defense, chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and an assortment of nongovernmental experts. The meeting was chaired by Richard Perle.
Murawiec was one of the itinerant peddlers of the national-security world, an authority on everything and nothing. He was, however, at one with the zeitgeist. His PowerPoint presentation that day began with the conventional wisdom about the Arab world: Centuries of failure had driven Arabs to the depths of despair and the heights of envy; humiliated, with nothing to show for themselves since the golden age of medieval Islam, they had lashed out against the West.
He then focused on Saudi Arabia: The country’s rule, he said, had been usurped by Wahhabists whose mission in life was to draw blood from the West. “Saudi Arabia,” Murawiec explained, “is central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly directed aggression. The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader. Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies; a daily outpouring of virulent hatred against the U.S. from Saudi media, ‘educational’ institutions, clerics, officials—Saudis tell us one thing in private, [but they] do the contrary in reality.”
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