|
|
Oil dynasties
House of Bush, House of Saud
By Craig Unger
Published by Scribner (New York), 2004, $15.60
Reviewed by Geoff Jones
"WHY DID the Bush administration approve the secret airlift
out of America of 140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden,
just after September 11?"
This question is posed on the cover of Craig Unger’s book,
House of Bush, House of Saud. However, this is no Michael Moore–style easy read,
but a serious analytical work. A bestseller in the USA, it is not published in
Britain because of fear of the libel laws. Luckily you can order it from
Amazon.com, and get it by return of post – from Germany!
Unger, a senior US journalist, ties together the history of
two very different families. On one side is the Bush family – a dynasty of the
elite of the US capitalist class, passing on power from generation to generation
in both the public and private sectors. From investment banker Prescott Bush,
through his son George HW, and George’s son, George W, the family has links with
all the big names in the eastern establishment of corporate USA. On the other
side, the Arab clan of al-Saud linked with Wahhabism, an extreme puritanical
sect of Islam, anathema to traditional Muslims, which insists on professions of
faith not unlike those of ‘born-again’ Christians.
The al-Sauds grabbed control of the Arabian peninsula in the
1920s with extreme brutality and established a reactionary religious state,
where extreme adherence to Islamic codes still leads to barbaric punishments,
such as public beheading or amputation of a hand for theft.
What links these two dynasties? In a word, oil. And oil
makes a black stream through the history of US capitalism over the last half
century. In 1948, George HW and family moved west to Texas at the moment that
Texas was beginning its expansion from a poor rural state to millionaire
capitalism based on oil. Bush built a business empire, profiting from the
explosive growth in demand for oil in the post-war economic boom. But by the
early 1970s, the oil wells of Texas were beginning to run dry and US capitalism
looked to Middle East imports to feed its ravenous demand. In 1973, Arab oil
producers imposed a boycott on the US in reaction to its support for Israel,
causing petrol shortages, queues and near panic in the USA. From then on the
whole of US policy in the Middle East has revolved around one thing –
safeguarding oil supplies for its greedy gas-guzzlers.
This, of course, was where the al-Sauds came in. They found
themselves sitting on around a quarter of the world’s oil reserves – which they
considered their personal property. In the space of a few years, the al-Saud
clan and their hangers-on became obscenely rich. Paying lip service at home to a
very strict version of Islam, abroad the princes enjoyed a millionaire playboy
lifestyle.
Dollars poured into Saudi Arabia and millions stuck to the
fingers of those families in good odour with the royals. Two families were
pre-eminent. The bin Mahfouz family acted as royal bankers and set up the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to shift money around (and get
around Islam’s prohibition on usury). In 1992, BCCI collapsed having defrauded
investors of between $5bn and $15bn. The second was the bin Laden family whose
construction firm hoovered up multimillion dollar contracts from the royal
family. When dynasty founder Mohammed bin Laden was killed in a plane crash in
1968, his wealth was spread among his 25 sons, including ten-year-old Osama who
received the equivalent of $200-400m at today’s prices.
The more acute Saudi royals realised that to keep their
power they needed friends in the US establishment. At the same time, they had
uncounted millions of dollars which could not just be lavished on luxuries – who
needs two £3bn palaces? The dollars received from the US could be spent back in
the US on buying armaments and investing in companies and organisations which
put money into the pockets of political ‘friends’ (both Democrat and
Republican). Furthermore, Saudi money, via BCCI, could be used by ‘friends’ to
fund illegal US operations across the world. Saudi money paid the
anti-Sandinista reactionaries in Nicaragua. In 1981, $10m of Saudi money was
deposited in a Vatican bank to fund a campaign against the Italian Communist
Party.
Unger spells out the most blatant links with companies
involving the Bush family. George Bush senior was vice president from 1980 to
1988 and president from 1989 to 1992. In those years, Unger calculates that a
sum of $1,476bn made its way from the Saudis to the ‘House of Bush’, its allied
companies and institutions. No wonder Unger dubs George W Bush ‘The Arabian
Candidate’.
All through the 1980s and 1990s, US administrations were
happy to go along with the vicious and brutal al-Saud regime. To make sure the
oil kept flowing, the watchword was ‘Don’t ask what happens in Saudi Arabia’.
But the US-Saudi link germinated the seeds of disaster. When
the cold war enemy, Soviet Russia, became embroiled in Afghanistan, US
strategists saw an opportunity to fight a war by proxy by arming and training
groups of Islamic militants as guerrilla fighters against the ‘godless’ Soviets.
Those forces were funded by Saudi dollars and the manpower came mainly from
Saudi Arabia. In training camps in Pakistan and in battle in Afghanistan itself,
one name became pre-eminent, Osama bin Laden, the bravest and most unyielding
fighter, and the most rigorous of right-wing fundamentalists. After the Russians
were forced out and the secular government was overthrown, bin Laden used his
family money to establish al-Qa’ida as a multinational network. But the enemy
changed. When Saddam Hussein (another maverick US client who had started his
career as a CIA assassin) invaded Kuwait, US forces moved into Saudi Arabia in
large numbers to protect oil supplies. This was anathema to bin Laden. The
occupation of Islam’s holy land by ‘godless’ US troops was the trigger for the
al-Qa’ida campaign against the USA which culminated in the destruction of the
World Trade Center. The organisation built by US capitalism had become its
greatest enemy.
A major point made by Unger is that the US administration
consistently underestimated the danger of al-Qa’ida and still refuses to admit
either that the majority of al-Qa’ida operatives in the USA are Saudi Arabian,
or that the group who organised the 11 September massacre had been allowed into
the USA with zero security screening in order not to upset the Saudis.
Al-Qa’ida apart, far from being the Arabian candidate, Bush
junior turned out to be a disaster. As in many other dynasties, an intelligent
politician father has been succeeded by a know-nothing son. The Middle East
strategy of Reagan, Bush and Clinton through the 1980s and 1990s consisted of a
careful balancing act: keeping the al-Sauds happy while placating the Zionist
lobby in the US and not getting directly involved. Unger quotes a prophetic
comment made by George HW in 1998, explaining why the US merely pushed Saddam
out of Kuwait seven years earlier, rather than deposed him: "Had we gone the
invasion route, the US could conceivably still be an occupying power in a
bitterly hostile land".
George W did not listen to his father. From the day of his
inauguration he has been under the influence of fundamentalist Christian,
strongly pro-Israel right-wingers. Their policy was from the start to cut loose
from Saudi Arabia and install a trustworthy client in Baghdad to give them
control of Iraq’s oil (the world’s second largest reserves), ‘roll back’ the
anti-US theocratic regime in Iran, and impose a settlement on the Palestinians.
The ‘balancing act’ policy lies in ruins, but George W is heading for further
disaster. Since Unger’s book was published, Bush has given wholesale endorsement
to Ariel Sharon’s plan to imprison the Palestinians in bantustan-type enclaves.
This, together with the occupation of Iraq, has caused a typhoon of opposition
in the Arab world. At a minimum, the al-Saud family will be forced, on pain of
an uprising by their own people, to put pressure on Bush to back down. They have
complete control of the volume of oil they export and hence, finally, on the
price of petrol in the US. A major increase in petrol prices is already on the
cards. This could have an incalculable effect on the US presidential elections
and, more importantly, the prospects for the world economy. At worst (from
capitalism’s point of view), the al-Sauds may be overthrown by a popular
uprising and a theocratic anti-US regime installed.
Unger chronicles the political story of US capitalism’s wars
for oil in exhaustive detail – almost a text book – with many footnotes to each
chapter. He is no left winger, but this makes his indictment even more
compelling. His book is essential reading.
|