June 30, 1996

Saudi Arabia Terrorism May Lead To American Empire

There is political terrorism (IRA in Britain), religious terrorism (Hezbollah in Israel) and anti-government terrorism (McVeigh and Nichols in Oklahoma City) -- all despicable.

Mix all these with oil -- as last week in Saudi Arabia -- and you have the mother of all explosions. A monster truck bomb at the American airfield of Dhahran killed 19 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 200.

Let it continue in Saudi Arabia and that country could become the first outpost of an American empire on which the sun never sets.

President Clinton vows to bring the latest terrorists to justice and sends an FBI team abroad to help track them down. Not only do we send soldiers everywhere to police the world, we reserve the right to move in and supervise client nations.

We have 40,000 Americans working in Saudi Arabia, including 5,000 military personnel backed up by scores of fighter jets keeping an eye on Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Saudi Arabia did catch and behead four of its own nationals who bombed a U.S. base there last November killing five Americans and two Asian Indian workers.

Muslim holy-war fanatics are more experienced and harder to apprehend. A suicide bomber in 1983 blew up a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon killing 241, but his accomplices are still at large.

It may be that the Dhahran bombing is again the work of home-grown terrorists. Saudis complain that the royal family of 3,200 princes rule autocratically and keep oil profits for themselves. Democracy promised during the Gulf War did not materialize.

Said Aburish, a Palestinian-American author, has written a book warning of an imminent overthrow of the Saudi government through a partnership of the middle class and Islamic fundamentalists.

He estimates per capita income in Saudi Arabia, adjusted for inflation, has dropped from $14,000 to $4,000 a year since 1982. Unemployment among young men has soared to 25 percent.

In the heady days of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia and other oil cartel countries ran the price of gasoline out of sight as punishment for supporting Israel. Then, every Saudi man was given a free college education, taxes were zero, housing was subsidized, and health care was universal. Workers from other countries were imported to do the menial labor.

No one cared about democracy as long as the money wrung from desperate, industrial nations was ladled out. However, the $50 billion of debt incurred by Saudi Arabia to help pay for the Gulf War has choked off the freebies.

King Fahd, 75, suffered a stroke recently and is incoherent much of the time. Saudi dissidents sense an opportunity to capitalize on the internal battle to take over the throne and the oil wealth.

A previously unknown terrorist group calling itself the "Legion of the Martyr Abduliah al-Huzaifi" claimed credit for the Dhahran bombing. A Saudi of that name was beheaded last year for throwing acid on a Saudi military officer. The caller declared bombing attacks would continue "until all foreign troops occupying the holy Saudi land" are expelled.

It must be remembered that Mecca, the holiest shrine of Islam, is in Saudi Arabia. Only the king is permitted once a year to enter the Kaaba mosque to clean an ancient meteorite revered by Muslims. At those times, hundreds of thousands Muslims from throughout the world come on pilgrimage.

Thus, powerful forces from several quarters now converge in Saudi Arabia -- religious, social, economic, political. Any one of these is capable of throwing the country into turmoil and disrupting the critical oil supply to industrial nations.

Half the oil guzzled in the U.S. comes from Arab countries. Japan gets 90 percent, Europe 80 percent. Mideast oil already is in precarious supply. Iraq's oil is embargoed, Iran's under sanction. Both Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait are vulnerable to terrorism -- as the firing of Kuwait oil wells by Iraq demonstrated during the Gulf War. To know the devastating effect of an oil shortage, one has only to recall the gasoline panic of 1973 -- when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting States (OPEC) imposed its blackmail on the U.S.

Europe and Japan have the greatest interest in a dependable flow of black gold from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. need is not inconsiderable.

In theory, Europe and Japan should be in the forefront of Mideast peace efforts. Yet their economies also are in a shambles. Their solution -- specifically expressed to President Clinton at this week's G-7 economic conference in Lyon, France -- is to appease the terrorist oil-rich nations of Iran and Iraq.

United States is the only nation with the economy and military hardware to protect the world oil supply. One month of lines at the gasoline pumps, and one week of freezing weather, would have Americans demanding another Gulf Storm.

Next time, American occupation will be for keeps -- as guardian of the earth's most precious resource.

PARTING SHOTS

Roy Brock wonders, "Why is it that the people who know how to run the country are cutting hair or driving taxis?"

* * *

The Supreme Court has ruled that the 150-year-old men- only Virginia Military Institute discriminates against women and must accept them as students.

Women first wanted to vote, then smoke cigars and drive automobiles. Next, they will want to grow mustaches.

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Hillary Clinton says she talks to Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Ghandi. Nothing wrong with that as long as they don't talk back.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers