Is Saudi Arabia next target on Bush's list?

C.P.F. Luhulima, Foreign Affairs Analyst Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta

Ever since the demonization of Saddam Hussein in the American media and the huge political investment in the possible war with Iraq, the probable attack on Iraq and the removal of Saddam have become the commitment of the Bush administration and have filled the monitors, television screens and pages of the media world- wide.

Even the murderous Bali bomb blast allegedly perpetrated by the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah have not replaced Saddam Hussein as U.S. enemy number one. Any attempt of backing down from this commitment will cost President Bush enormously, thus leaving him no choice but start the war.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Advisory Board "and one of the architects of this war" (Scott Ritter), argues, "Bush must go to war in Iraq to preserve his political reputation." He even contends "the failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism." Perle is not the only one in Bush's entourage who are pushing him toward war.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle think that such a war will be an easy one, like the first Gulf War. The removal of Saddam Hussein, a man they accused of absolutely and positively possessing weapons of mass destruction who will again use them against his neighbors, and who will give these weapons to Osama bin Laden to be used against America, is thus Bush's first priority in his war against international terrorism. Bush and his team believe that the case has been fully made for Saddam's immediate removal.

The U.S. is, however, not simply destroying weapons and weapons facilities and removing Saddam Hussein. It is not only instituting a "regime change". It will bring forth the birth of the first liberal democracy in the Arab world. It would be hard to establish a laboratory of democracy without occupying Iraq first.

As a consequence, it is for the occupation of Iraq militarily, since the military is the one source of power on the scene to enable the U.S. to do it. It will develop a detailed plan to install a U.S.-led military government in Iraq, modeled on America's post-war occupation of Japan or Germany. U.S. commanders will then be responsible for its stability and for overseeing the transformation of the country to an elected civilian government.

Authority will then only be yielded to the Iraqis when an electoral system has been installed and the search for weapons of mass destruction is well underway. The Bush's administration is thus scaling back on earlier plans of a role for Iraqi opposition figures and groups, who are now mostly living in exile. Bush's aides argue that they want full control of Iraq while U.S.-led forces carry out their principal mission, which is finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction.

But will the U.S. military be able to carry out the broader mission in postwar Iraq beyond its role in strictly martial terms? Such a broad definition for the armed forces to engage in, it is feared, will backfire, as it has in the past.

Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector, in his book War on Iraq (2002), argues that it is "doubtful in the extreme" that Saddam Hussein "has retained any functional aspect of the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the United Nations weapons inspectors" who worked there for seven years.

The other fact is Saddam has no connection to fundamentalist Islam. He is a secular leader who has, for years, crushed fundamentalist Islam in Iraq. It was Saddam's dislike for Islamic fundamentalism, first, and his desire to control Iranian oil that led him to try an invasion of Iran in 1980, albeit urged and backed up militarily by the U.S. Because of this, if he were to provide weapons of any kind to al-Qaeda, they would certainly use those weapons on him first.

The crucial question is will the Bush administration stop here, in Iraq? The occupation of Iraq will ensure American control of Iraqi oil, of the second largest proven reserves of oil, close to 11 percent of world supply. Will the control of Iraq, if the U.S. can really achieve it, also enable it to expand its role in the Middle East and take on Saudi Arabia as its next target?

Since the establishment of the House of Saud and particularly since the country's emergence as the world's number one oil supplier, the monarchy has played a double role in the perception of the U.S. Officially, it was the closest strategic ally of the United States in the Arab world. Unofficially, it encourages a hard line and violently anti-Western brand of Islam, which is Wahabism. It finances the religious schools, the madrassas, in much of Africa and Asia. The schools teach fundamental Islam and produces squads of terrorists that run around in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Some of the fanatics produced in the process -- of simultaneously creating friends and enemies of the United States -- chose the role of enemy of the U.S. in September last year, personified in Osama bin Laden and his squads. Much has been reported about the rising anger in the U.S. against a government that has helped to create and spread the terrorist movement. The anger erupted in the open when the Rand Corporation recently leaked its findings to the media: It identified Saudi Arabia as a major problem for the Bush administration in the Middle East.

Although both sides endeavor to minimize the significance of this leakage, the U.S. is, behind the scenes, taking concrete steps to reduce and, if possible, eliminate their dependence on Saudi Arabia as soon as it possibly can. The Bush administration is making efforts to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government refused to give permission for their use during the Afghanistan war, and have recently also banned their use for the probable Iraq war.

A swift relocation of American forces would be regarded, it is assumed, as a slap in the face of the Saudis. More so, because the Bush administration is establishing new bases in the smaller countries around Saudi Arabia, such as Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The control of Iraq and the assistance of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain will safeguard U.S. oil supplies. Will the Bush administration take the next step in its war against terrorism by ousting the House of Saud and its 6,000 odd princelings as the "breeders" of international terrorism? That step, if embarked upon, will undoubtedly create a huge backlash.