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A one-sided dialogue
by Khaled Muhammad Batarfi
I sent an e-mail message to an
American senator who is the head of an important Senate committee. I
requested that he clarify his views on the recent Rand Corporation report
which contained a clear threat to Saudi Arabia’s security. I wanted to
know if the report was a test trial of some new US policy being considered
or a way of intimidating the Kingdom into cooperating with US plans to
invade Iraq. Or was it the unveiling of a secret agenda chalked out by an
influential section within the US leadership?
He replied promptly that he would
meet me and answer all my questions during his upcoming visit to the
Kingdom. Shortly afterward we met in Jeddah. It was a half-hour meeting in
which I listened to his views on the significance of Saudi-American
relations. He defended the credibility and impartiality of the US media.
He also downplayed the influence of the Zionist lobby on US policy-making
circles while justifying the US media campaign against the Kingdom. Then I
was finally allowed to put my questions to him.
I told him that most Muslims
thought that the US had an overt — or secret — and direct — or indirect —
role in all the wars of the last decade: in the Balkans, Sudan, southern
Philippines, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Gulf, North Africa,
Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. All these wars were fought against Muslim
countries and most of the victims were Muslims. Muslims believe that the
anti-Muslim stand by the US is part of a larger US scheme to enforce a new
world order in which the West leads the world and East surrenders to West.
As the US failed to implement
this design with the assistance of the World Trade Organization, the
country found an excuse in the Sept. 11 attacks for implementing it by
force. My precise question to him was how much of this charge against the
US is true or false in his view. He began refuting my argument by citing
how the US had intervened, though recently, in a positive manner in the
Balkans. Before he could complete the discussion, one of his aides
intervened to say that he was late for his next appointment.
He promised that he would
complete his answers to me the next afternoon. The next day, however, I
got a message from him that his meeting with a minister had taken longer
than expected and that he would consequently be unable to meet me that
day. Again the meeting was postponed and so it went until he finally
apologized for not having time to meet me during his visit. My questions
are still unanswered.
Source:
by courtesy & ©
2002 Khaled Muhammad Batarfi & Arab News
by the same author:
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