US Continues to Kowtow Before Saudi Arabia

A Lebanese Muslin man, Ali Hussain Sibat, charged with sorcery and sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, is scheduled to be beheaded on Friday, April 2, 2010, the man’s lawyer said Wednesday. The United States State Department and president Obama seem to have little if anything to say on the issue as the US continues to kowtow to a nation that routinely violates human rights.

Sibat, the father of five young children, is the former host of a popular call in entertainment show that aired on the Beirut based satellite TV channel “Sheherazade.” According to his lawyer, Sibat would predict the future and give out advice to his TV audience.

Sibat’s attorney told CNN her client was arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police (known as the Mutawa’een) and charged with sorcery while visiting the country in May 2008. Sibat was in Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic religious pilgrimage known as Umra.

Saudia Arabia is considered by the United States to be one of its strongest allies and friends in the Mideast region. This stated “friendship” even survived the fact that 15 of the 19 hard core airplane hijacking al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 were from Saudi Arabia. What a friendship.

The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terrorism. It invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. So let’s get this straight. The majority of the terrorist were from Saudi Arabia but due to the special friendship extended to Saudi Arabia by the United States we attack the Taliban in Afghanistan rather than by going directly to the source of the terrorist network. There is no doubt that much of the funding received by Al Qaeda originates in Saudi Arabia. Now, some nine years after the 9/11 attacks we are still fighting the Taliban while continuing to Kowtow to Saudi Arabia.

Further evidence of the special relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia was given in April 2009 as during his visit to Saudi Arabia President Obama greeted the king with a full bow from the waist, a move one commentator described as a violation of protocol and not worthy of the office president Obama holds. This show of respect and servitude may not have been a complete kowtow but it came darn close.

“I am quite certain that this is not the protocol, and is most unbecoming a president of the United States,” writes Clarice Feldman in an American Thinker commentary. To see the bow watch to video. The bow (sure looks like a deep bow to me) takes place about 58 seconds in.

We should keep in mind that while the United States makes a lot of worldwide noise about promoting freedom and democracy that when it comes to protecting what we perceive as our own interests we are prepared to be quite flexible in kowtowing to Saudi Arabia and other despotic regimes around the world. Saudi Arabia has one of the most regressive, medieval in nature, cruel, and hypocritical regimes of any country in the world, yet we consider them to be close allies and good friends. Hypocrisy indeed. That is one area in which the United States is most certainly a world leader.

Nothing could provide a better example of our willingness to look the other way and give Saudi Arabia a free pass on human rights than our State Department’s silence on the Sibat beheading issue. Perhaps it’s only because Sibat is a Lebanese citizen and we are not on the best of terms with Lebanon. However, it seems to me that a nation that preaches freedom, democracy, and justice at every opportunity should not remain silent when one of its so-called friends is about to execute a man by cutting off his head for the offense of sorcery.

Sorcery? Unfortunately, I am not kidding, as outdated the term should be in the 21st century. However, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, our dear friend in the Mideast, still operates with one foot set firmly in the past of over 1000 years ago and the other foot planted in oil fields that feed an United States addiction. Apparently and sadly, our addiction for Saudi Arabian oil trumps any concern that we may have over human right issues and the fact that it was Saudi Arabian citizens that led the 9/11 attack against the United States.

As long as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has oil to sell to the United States I expect that US politicians will continue to kowtow to, support, and defend the Saudi Arabian government, no matter how repressive and depraved the royal family and government may be.