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Preeti on the Web |
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Providing Food for Thought |
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Laughing Stocks of the World |
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The United States loves oil so much that it’s willing to sacrifice democracy, freedom and equality at the slightest whiff of oil. |
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U.S. support for freedom is selective |
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November 22, 2005 |
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To Contact Preeti: preetiontheweb at yahoo dot com |
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Please note that all text on this webpage is copyrighted ©. Please do not quote or paraphrase without using proper citations. |
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When my father was a teenager in India back in the 1960s, he would use my grandfather’s short-wave radio to listen to Voice of America—an American radio program broadcast to the Third World. The program would play popular American music, interspersed with propagandist broadcasts that would extol the American virtues of democracy, freedom and equality. My father would also turn the dial on that very same radio to listen to BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news reports that were broadcast out of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Through the BBC, my father learned of the Watts race riots in California and the inferior treatment of Blacks in the American South. My father couldn’t help but smile wryly at this hypocrisy. The United States was making itself the laughing stock of the Third World. It was lecturing developing countries about equality and freedom, yet it couldn’t even grant those very same rights to its own citizens. I couldn’t help but be reminded of this dissonance between American rhetoric and American policy when I heard journalist Thomas Lippmann speak at Duke University last week about the history of the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia. Over the past five decades, the United States has created a national airline for Saudi Arabia, established a Saudi central bank and currency, and introduced mechanized agriculture, which has made Saudi Arabia the home of the world’s largest dairy herd. Through the Ford Foundation, the U.S. put Saudi Arabia in the GMT +2:00 time zone and helped it establish a civil service that could carry out a census and issue permits of various kinds. Contracts with GE and Bechtel, as well as the training of Saudi students at American universities, helped develop the Saudi oil industry and make the country the recipient of a “Niagara of cash.” As a result of these and other numerous efforts, Saudi Arabia has transformed from a nation of mud huts and date palms to one of Levittown neighborhoods and cities that are more in compliance with the ADA than Cleveland is. Lippman claims that the capital city of Riyadh is virtually like Phoenix. Well, like Phoenix except that there’s no democratic government, no equality for women, and no tolerance for modes of thinking outside a certain xenophobic brand of strict Islamic conservatism. Why has the U.S. continued to maintain friendly ties to a nation whose political values run so counter to our own, the very values that we claim that thousands of Americans have died for and the very values that we claim were attacked on 9/11 by 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia? The simple reason: We have a bargain. The U.S. gets oil and a military base, Saudi Arabia gets money and aid, and the U.S. won’t meddle with the House of Saud. We’ve even restrained ourselves from sending Jews in our delegations to the Kingdom. In his talk, Lippman characterized this relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as one among “consenting adults,” but later admitted himself that “Saudi Arabia dictated the terms.” He said that Saudi Arabia “want[s] to keep us hooked on oil….” There’s certainly no problem there! Americans need no help with that one. Ultimately, despite U.S. rhetoric, American support for democracy, freedom, and equality in other countries is selective. In the case of Saudi Arabia, support of these noble values is a luxury we can’t afford. We want oil—first for our Ford Explorers, then for our Ford Expeditions, and then for our obscene Ford Excursions. What is the price that Americans are willing to pay for oil? As Lippman pointed out, recent events have shown the Saudis that we’ll tolerate $60 per barrel, or the $3 per gallon it translates to. But, there’s more than the economic cost that we’re willing to tolerate. We’re willing to tolerate that Saudi Arabia funds the terrorist group Hamas. We’re willing to tolerate that it creates a climate of violent hostility to the U.S. through its textbooks and religious leaders. We’re willing to tolerate that the country beheads people and doesn’t let women drive. Not much has changed since the 1960s. We’re still in many ways the laughing stock of the world. We go about preaching democracy, freedom and equality, yet we have no hesitation in sacrificing those values once we get a whiff of oil. Somewhere out there, there’s a teenager listening to Voice of America, and chuckling to himself as he turns to the BBC. |
