CHENEYISM STRETCHED TO ITS LIMIT

Cheneyism(n): The policy of allying with Israel as if there was no Saudi Arabia, while allying with Saudi Arabia as if there was no Israel. (Click here for the article where Leon Wieseltier coined the term).

Dubya got a visit today from our Saudi "friends," in which they expressed their extreme displeasure at the Bush Administration's half-hearted efforts to tie Israel's hands behind its back in its war against Palestinian terror. They would appreciate it if we would (1) pressure Israel to simply let the terrorists profraning the Church of the Nativity and hiding out in Arafat's compund escape, (2) roll over and let the United Nations conduct a sham investigation of the "massacre" in Jenin, and (3) ignore Saudi financing of Palestinian terror, not to mention Saudi ties to international Islamic terror groups such as al-Qaeda.

Thus, Cheneyism has been stretched to the limit. On the one hand, we have a strong, deep alliance with the region's sole democracy, who is virulently attacked for holding the same values that we hold. On the other hand, we have a profitable relationship buying oil and selling weapons to a rickety theocratic feudal monarchy that represents the antithesis of everything for which America stands. Oil or principle, which is more important?

This is not an issue for the Europeans, who stand firmly with their pocketbook interests. This was not an issue for the elder Bush, who let the Saudis dictate the Gulf War's disasterous endgame. It is, however, an issue for this administration. The State Department is convinced that we need the Saudis support to take on Iraq - and selling out Israel is a price worth paying (especially since it would reduce the carping from their European colleagues). The neocons running the Defense Department think that abandoning the front-line state in the war on Islamic terror to curry favor with Islamic terror's chief financiers is madness, and in the end self-defeating.

One need not look any further than the Gulf War to see the folly of the pro-Saudi approach. In the interests of "stability," the first Bush administration 1) allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power, 2) permitted a Hussein to massacre his Kurdish and Shiite opponents, and 3) refrained from introducing democracy to Kuwait, which quickly reverted to being another corrupt Gulf tyranny. The result has been a renewal of the Iraqi threat, rabid anti-Americanism in a country Americans liberated, and the continuance of the corrupt Saudi regime, which has become the financial and ideological center for the single most virulent anti-liberal, anti-American movement in the world.

It's time to call the Saudis what they really are, enemies in a cold war between liberal democratic values and fundamentalist theocratic values. The proper response is not appeasement, but confrontation and containment. Every day, Saudi-financed and Saudi-trained imams are trying to infect Muslim communities world-wide with their militant Wahabi views. The nations of the West need to send these imams home before it is too late. Without being flooded by Saudi petrodollars, the righteous opponents of Wahabism in the Muslim world will have an even playing field - and will emerge victorious in democratic societies.

It's time for America to realize that its energy policies directly conflict with its national interest. When given the choice, Americans will choose democracy over cheap oil - the real safety of a world where militant Islamism is starved of funds, rather the fake safety of oversized SUVs. Cheneyism has stretched as far as it can go. It is time to free ourselves of the deadly embrace with the Saudis - and work to bring about a free, post-Saudi Arab world.