Page 483 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

48o Arabia, the Gulf and the West

feelings of mutual affection and regard which existed between Arabs and

Americans (an affinity so natural, in fact, that it must surely have been
ordained by the Divine Creator himself) as they did from the normal determin­

ants of trade between countries. One of the foremost of these opportunities, as
nearly every witness was at pains to remark, was that of selling huge quantities
of arms to the Gulf countries, all of which, so it was argued, had an urgent and
legitimate need for them.

Such, here necessarily compressed, was the burden of the opinions vouch­
safed to the congressional committees by the great majority of witnesses who

appeared before them between 1972 and 1977. Nothing that occurred in
Arabia and the Gulf in these years acted to wither or stale these Panglossian
views, which were still in the ascendant in Washington in 1979. Yet for all the
assurance with which they were enunciated, they had a markedly hollow ring

to them — which was hardly surprising since they originated in a virtual
vacuum. Unlike other areas of the world, Arabia and the Gulf were practically
terra incognita to most Americans. They had no historical links with the

region, no long record of travel and exploration, no political, military or-
before the advent of the oil era - mercantile contacts, no intimate experience,
extending over generations, of its inhabitants and their ways, no tradition of
American scholarship on Arabia and Persia. Despite these deficiencies, how­

ever, one may search in vain through the hundreds of thousands of words
uttered by the succession of voluble witnesses who testified between 1972 and
1977 for even the most fleeting acknowledgement of the slightest feeling of

inadequacy on the part of any speaker to pronounce with less than Olympian
certitude upon the matters set before him. One can only wonder, in the
circumstances, where this ease of exposition and conviction of omniscience
derived from.
Where the witnesses possessed some knowledge of, or acquaintance with,

Arabia and the Gulf (as in the case of the State Department officials) they
seemed less concerned to enlighten their hearers about the area than to urge
upon them a particular interpretation of Arabian or Gulf politics, together

with its implications for the correct policy for the United States to adopt in
the region. To make their point, the State Department officials resorted to a
good deal of obfuscation, and at times to downright misrepresentation.

instance, the standard version of the history of Saudi Arabia retailed by t e$
officials was expurgated to a degree that might have been considere ^xc
sive even by ARAMCO’s fulsome standards. From it the senators an c -

gressmen would have learned nothing of the bloodier aspects o e
conquests in Arabia, of the darker side of the Saudi family history, o
intolerance of Wahhabism, of the corruption and cruelty ™mpan ,

Saudi court, of the colossal waste of oil revenues - o anY ’ sjonjst
which might have indicated the true nature of the Saudi sta e, 1 -a
tendencies and the dread in which it was held by its neighbours in A