LibriumArcana.Games

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer should stop referring to grown women as children.

The women in question are Amjad Radwan and Alia and Aisha Gheshayan, three American citizens in Saudi Arabia whose fate has finally become an issue for Congress. When reporters at a White House press briefing recently deluged Mr. Fleischer with questions about whether President Bush had raised their plight during an Oval Office chat with the visiting Saudi Foreign Minister, he repeatedly--eight times by our count--invoked the word "custody" or "custody of a child" to characterize how the "President views this."

It's true that a number of American mothers have had an awful time getting children out of Saudi Arabia, though even here it beggars belief to reduce these to custody disputes. But two of the three cases that the House Government Reform Committee aired during its hearings did not involve children.

Amjad Radwan is 19 years old and, unlike her older brother, cannot leave Saudi Arabia because she is a woman and must have the permission of her Saudi father, who refuses to give it. In highly charged testimony delivered via videotape, Amjad's mom, Monica Stowers, told the House she remains in Saudi Arabia because she fears for her daughter's life; Miss Stowers further reported that both her son and daughter were raped by members of her former husband's family. The Roush sisters are also adults.

When pressed on this point, the State Department says it has made every effort to ascertain the women's wishes about returning to America. In the case of Miss Roush's daughters, however, State concedes that it hasn't seen them since the mid-1990s. Moreover, its own human-rights report on Saudi Arabia declares that "physical spousal abuse and violence against women" is "common" and that the Saudi government tends to look the other way. Translation: The only way these Americans are going to be able to speak freely, without fear of returning home to a beating, is to insist that Riyadh give them the exit visas that will allow them to come here.

The truth is that there isn't a soul at State or the Saudi Foreign Ministry who doesn't understand that if President Bush were to express his displeasure to Crown Prince Abdullah, then Alia, Aisha and Amjad would be on the next plane for New York. And things would never have reached this dismal stage if the State Department hadn't signaled from the start that it was willing to let all the ground rules be set by Saudi law and custom--even in defiance of U.S. courts, arrest warrants and rights.

Last June, 23 Senators, including leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, signed a letter asking Secretary of State Colin Powell "in the strongest possible terms, to intervene forcefully and in person with the Saudi authorities at the highest levels to secure the prompt release and repatriation of Alia and Aisha Gheshayan." The immediate answer was the standard State kiss-off: a letter explaining that the women were "subject to Saudi law."

But it seems that Congressional interest can have a catalyzing effect on Foggy Bottom. At hearings last Tuesday before the House International Relations Committee, William Burns, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, disclosed that Mr. Powell has now raised the issue with the Saudi Foreign Minister and that he himself brought it up with Crown Prince Abdullah 10 days earlier, on the eve of the Government Reform Committee's hearings.

But Mr. Burns continued to define the issue as a custody dispute. And his remarks suggest that State still refuses to treat this as a state-to-state issue, in favor of a touchy-feely approach about "keeping families connected." This is a long way from "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead"--Teddy Roosevelt's tart reaction when a Berber bandit chieftain took an American hostage in Tangier.

In a TV spot running under the title "Allies Against Terrorism," the Saudi government urges Americans to "listen to your leaders" when it comes to the "facts" about the country that spawned 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers. It features President Bush vouching for how the Saudis "have been nothing but cooperative." This is their chance to prove it.

Remember the fuss raised by Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister back in January about the U.S. detention of captured Saudi nationals in Guantanamo?

"We'll demand that the Saudi detainees be handed over, because they are subject to the Kingdom's rules," Prince Naif told the Arab News back in January. At least the Saudi government speaks up for its (male) citizens.

Chairman Dan Burton says his House Government Reform Committee has evidence of some 46 cases involving American citizens held against their will in Saudi Arabia. And his committee has just drafted a bipartisan letter to President Bush, urging him to express the same interest on behalf of these innocent Americans that the Saudi minister showed for his country's captured terrorists. (Even Mr. Burton's arch-foe, Henry Waxman, signed it!)

Mr. Burton's letter, which he tells us he hopes to deliver personally, grows out of emotional hearings yesterday in which three American women related their horror stories about being caught between a hostile Saudi law and an ineffective and too often indifferent State Department. As William McGurn reported Tuesday, Pat Roush's two daughters, Alia and Aisha, were kidnapped from America in 1986. On Monday she learned that her Saudi ex-husband has married off Aisha in what she believes is retribution for her participation in these hearings. Dria Davis was luckier: At 13 she escaped from her abusive Saudi father, after getting no help from the U.S. embassy.

But perhaps most searing was Monica Stowers's tearful account of having two U.S. Marine guards escort her out of the Riyadh embassy where she'd sought refuge with her children. "One of them apologized to me saying, 'Ma'am, I'm sorry but we're only doing our job.' " Miss Stowers delivered her testimony yesterday via videotape, because she refuses to leave Saudi Arabia so long as the Saudis won't let her daughter depart with her.

Now, we sympathize with diplomats trying to uphold American law and interests in difficult parts of the world. That's their job. Unfortunately, the State Department has not yet recognized that when an American child is kidnapped, or when an American woman charged with no crime is held against her will, it's not just an affront to the individual. It's an affront to America.

So when the U.S. instructs its ambassadors to "maintain impartiality," it sends a terrible signal to foreign nations. We also have to believe that U.S. Marines don't sign up for duty believing they'll be called upon to do the dirty work of removing desperate American mothers and children from the premises. Certainly the Saudis picked up on it. As a Saudi official sneered when Miss Stowers showed up on his doorstep, "Why don't you go to your government for help?"

When asked about these cases during his briefing Tuesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher again referred to them as "civil matters" between individuals, not state-to-state issues. In the specific case of Pat Roush's daughters, he further argued that "at this point they're adults and they need to decide on their own."

Our friends the Saudis must have had a good laugh at that one. Saudi law forbids women of any age from leaving their country without permission. Another way of stating those same facts would be to say that two adult U.S. citizens are trapped in a country where women are treated as the property of men, with no way of knowing what they really think. The only way to let these and other women "decide on their own" is to insist, as Mrs. Roush requests, that they be permitted to come to America and speak for themselves.

For too long State has let the Saudis hide behind the pretense that they are handcuffed by a Saudi law that gives all rights to men, as if that feudal state were some kind of democracy. This tolerance for what amounts to kidnapping is one more example, like funding madrassa schools that teach the hatred of America, of the way the Saudis treat their supposed ally with contempt.

The fact is that the Saudis could issue exit visas to these innocent Americans any time they wanted. With President Bush set to meet Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal today, we can't think of a better time to ask.

Stofsk wrote:I thought this might be why you started that thread, frigid.

Petrosjko wrote:That said, my tangents do come back to this- Saudi is a key strategic acquaintance of ours (we need a new term for 'Ally who is constantly backbiting us')

sitting on key strategic products as well as occupying a key position near a war zone. Hence why I kept raising the point that it's not so simple as swooping into Bumfuckistan to kick down the doors and snatch our people.

Stofsk wrote:I don't think Saudi Arabia and you could be considered allies by any stretch of the imagination. An ally invokes in my mind the kind of 'special relationship' the UK has with the USA, or Canada and Australia to a lesser extent - the idea that we're partners but also friends.

'Temporary partners' is a term I made up just now, which seems to fit the bill. Once the oil runs out, lets see Saudi Arabia get any attention from the rest of the world.

Are you suggesting that Saudi Arabia has America by the balls, and that's why that John Wayne shit can't be done? Because I don't think the relationship can be seen as that one-sided. Films like 'Syriana' feel authentic to me because the relationship is poisonous but equally for both sides, which shows how far the oil industry has compromised morals in politics but also how much influence America has on, say, affairs of state in such countries (I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it) and it reminds me of Dune actually, the idea of this being a parasitic relationship where the big powerful side has fixated on the 'safe, easy course' that leads inexorably down to self-extinction.

And woah, that was a long rambling sentence. Shows you how I'm not at my best unless I've had 8 hours sleep... which I haven't had.

Petrosjko wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I don't think Saudi Arabia and you could be considered allies by any stretch of the imagination. An ally invokes in my mind the kind of 'special relationship' the UK has with the USA, or Canada and Australia to a lesser extent - the idea that we're partners but also friends.

'Temporary partners' is a term I made up just now, which seems to fit the bill. Once the oil runs out, lets see Saudi Arabia get any attention from the rest of the world.

Temporary partners works, I suppose.

Sort of. I'm saying that the situation is much more delicate than the easier scenario that I think most of the respondents were envisioning. Personally, yeah, we need to get them the fuck out of there, but we have to look at the fact that utilizing military force to do so could have disasterous consequences.

However, I don't think the morals in politics are any more compromised than they've ever been. Simply substitute any large trade interest and government in and you get the same results. Opium Wars, neh?