Neo-con wants to cut friendly ties with Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON — Former Department of Defense adviser Richard Perle, the immensely influential godfather of the neo-conservative movement, launched a public broadside against the alleged corruption of the Saudi Arabian government Thursday, and called on the United States to cease its friendly relations with Riyadh.

Perle claimed Saudi Arabia was no ally of the United States and that the Saudi royal family had allowed terrorist ideology to flourish within its borders and beyond. He called the U.S. government’s continued friendship with the Middle East nation the result of an intelligence failure worse than that concerning the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It is one of the greatest intelligence failures of the century that the rise of extremist institutions inspired culturally and intellectually by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia went so unmarked," Perle told a group at the conservative Hudson Institute. "This seems to me a far larger intelligence failure than the failure to anticipate the details of Sept. 11 because it was a huge and highly visible trend over many years."

Wahhabism is the dominant religion in Saudi Arabia and is often considered one of the strictest and most conservative forms of Sunni Islam.

Perle charged the Saudi royal family with intentionally failing to put a stop to the extremism born within the kingdom, but partly blamed the United States for turning a blind eye to what he claimed was blatant Saudi misbehavior.

"The Saudi regime is both responsible and capable of curtailing the activity," said Perle. "They haven’t been confronted with American measures that would require them to look for terrorism because we’ve been so willing to accept the fact that they are our allies."

Perle charged that part of the reason behind the continuation of the relationship was that the Saudi government essentially bribed U.S. personnel. He said taking money from the Saudi royal family had become common practice among U.S. officials leaving government posts and that this was just one of many ways in which the Saudi Arabian government had manipulated U.S. opinion of it.

"The Saudi regime has ... skillfully created a favorable image of Saudi Arabia in part by buying, or at least renting, virtually every U.S. government specialist. If you were to compile a list of the several hundred Americans who have served in Saudi Arabia in various capacities ... I believe you would find that a very high percentage of them earn their living from a continuing relationship with Saudi institutions after their service to the government."

Labeling such practices corrupt, Perle said he wanted to see an official inquiry into the matter, half-jokingly calling on the help of the attorney currently investigating several members of the Bush administration for misconduct.

"This needs to be investigated. I wish Patrick Fitzgerald would launch another intensive investigation into matters like that, which is of immense importance," he said.

Money, said Perle, had given the Saudi government much of its strength, and he implied it is being used to strengthen sectors of the society unfriendly to the United States.

He likened the conservative Wahhabi Muslim religious faction in Saudi Arabia to the Ku Klux Klan, had the KKK had access to the vast oil wealth that the Saudi royal family does.

"Imagine that the Texas branch of the KKK had at its disposal the oil revenues of the state of Texas. You have to ask if the KKK would have disappeared, or if it would have established itself in quite different ways. The vast amounts of money supporting these (Saudi) institutions have had their effect, and that money continues to do more than just government demands."

Saudis have traditionally relied on the fact that stability in the kingdom has been viewed as in the American interest, but Perle sees that shared interest diminishing, and with it the continued support of the United States for Saudi actions.

"It’s not easy to persuade them (the royals) that our interest in the stability of their reign is rapidly declining," Perle said. "If they ever became persuaded of that, I’m quite sure they have enough respect for our ability to destabilize their ’fragile’ kingdom, and would become a little more amenable to our concerns.

"So I would put it to them very clearly: The continuing subvention of extremism around the world means that it is no longer in the interest of the United States to treat a nation well."

"I hope that at some point we will convey the message that as we lose interest in stability in the kingdom, you’d better watch out," he said.

Perle is currently a senior fellow at the conservative, pro-free market Washington think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=...