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October 7, 2004: Senator Joseph Biden (D - Delaware,) the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, discusses Saudi Arabia with host Carol Marin.
Carol Marin: Senator Biden thank you for joining us
on WIDE ANGLE.
Joseph Biden: Happy to be with you.
Carol Marin: Is the situation so dire that the
administration of Saudi Arabia, the monarchy, is likely to be
destabilized, is likely to be overthrown?
Joseph Biden: Let me say what I mean. The
question is how urgent. It is dire in the sense that there's no
underpinning, there's no legitimacy, to this royal families continued
political domination. They made a Faustian bargain with the religious
organization who are made up of extremely conservative Sunnis, referred
to as Wahhabis, who have had as their habit and continue to have as
their habit exporting extremism in the Madrasas, the schools they build
all around the world, and in the way in which they educate the Saudi
youth. And the way they keep any notion of modernity -- as it relates to
spreading to the population at large -- at bay. And so it is an
incendiary bomb that is likely to explode. Whether it occurs in a year,
in a month, ten years, I don't know. But I would be dumbfounded -- if my
granddaughter, who is now ten years old -- when she is thirty five years
old and a professor at some university -- whether or not the royal
family is still in charge.
Carol Marin: In the category of the disaffected, the
large category of the disaffected, there seem to be two groups: those
who are looking for reform and those who are looking for jihad. Which do
we address first?
Joseph Biden: I think we address them
simultaneously. Here's the way I look at it. If you think about what
happens in all societies where any dissent is totally suppressed, they
will find the only outlet available to them. And the only outlet
available is the mosque. It's the only institution in all of Saudi
Arabia where there is not a limit or a governor on what is said. And so
when the only outlet for you, for your disaffection, is the mosque that
is in this case radical in its attitudes -- then that is the diet you
are going to be fed on. And you're likely to ingest it because of your
anger, your frustration and your alienation. There are educated people
in Saudi Arabia, usually educated abroad, who are part of the reform
movement in Saudi Arabia. But to the extent that they talk about
constitutional monarchy they get locked up. To the extent they talk
about any other outlet, any other political dissent, they get locked up.
And so in that environment what happens is the Ulema, the religious
leadership, dominates. And so if you took all of the shackles off and
then for example had an election tomorrow, you would elect, in my view,
an extremely radical, nihilistic leadership in Saudi Arabia. And I know
that sounds like I'm being extreme but almost every expert I speak to
agrees with me that that would be the outcome.
Carol Marin: Saudis, we talk to protest and say look
there's really a difference between religious fundamentalism and a
terrorist-kind of mindset. And you Americans, you confuse that.
Joseph Biden: Shows me when they build all these
7,000 Madrasas on the Pakistani-Afghani border and teach 'kill
Americans' in those Madrasas. That is the litany where you don't learn
to read or to write and add and subtract. What you learn is rote and
what you learn is an extreme version of the threat posed to your
religion by the rest of the world. I mean go into any of these Madrasas
-- I wish we could get one of the cameras into one of these Madrasas.
Carol Marin: Where, of course, our camera was
not.
Joseph Biden: Right. No, it's not. And I'm not
being critical I mean that's not going be the case. So it's not
coincidental that most of the hijackers and bombers were Saudi citizens.
Look, I mean it is a little bit like if the only drum beat you get is
sort of an extreme version of being oppressed -- with the rest of the
world as your enemy. It's not surprising you generate these aberrations.
I'm not saying everyone who's a Wahhabi is someone who's going to get in
a plane, hijack it, and smash it into a building. But I am saying the
environment in which that education takes place and the denial of É look
there's vast unemployment in Saudi Arabia. You've referenced it in your
piece. Now why is that? That's a very wealthy country. Why are they
importing six million workers? Not just to shine your shoes when you go
into the hotels but to run the oil fields. Isn't that kind of strange?
Because they don't have a qualified education system those folks who are
unemployed are not running Aramco. They're not running the oil wells.
They're not running the system. They are not the mathematicians. They
are not the scientists. They are not the chemists because their
education system doesn't provide that.
Carol Marin: If Saudi Arabia is on the verge, or
potentially able to implode; is it also equally able to explode in our
direction?
Joseph Biden: It's already exploding in our
direction. And that's why we have to get over this notion -- it's a
little bit like having a gas station on the corner. You don't like the
proprietor very much but he keeps pumping the gas. And now you find out
in the backroom they're cutting heroin and cocaine and they're
distributing it to all the drug dealers in the region. Obviously that
gas station now becomes your problem. It gives you gas but it's a
problem. Saudi Arabia is becoming our problem as well as our ally.
Carol Marin: What's our solution?
Joseph Biden: Our solution is to put pressure on
the Saudis. Not for radical transformation but a beginning of a gradual
transformation of democratization and opening up. For example we should
say to them, not only control the wealthy folks who register to build
Madrasas in other countries, and don't build them independently; give it
to the government of Pakistan. Give it to the government of Kurdistan.
Let them decide how they're going to use that money to build. We should
be saying to them set up an education system where you actually teach
people higher mathematics. You actually teach people language. You
actually teach people reading and writing at a level that they're going
to be able to have the good jobs. We should say to them you have to stop
having the state owned papers spew out this anti-Semitism. You've got to
have the state owned papers stop spewing out this absolute garbage that
you allow and you think you're buying off in this Faustian bargain
you've made with the Wahhabis.
Carol Marin: Well in this bargain we must feel we're
getting something that we need.
Joseph Biden: Well, I don't feel we're getting
something anymore. And I realize I'm an odd man out. Five years ago I
started saying this. Oh no, no, no don't offend our Saudi friends. And
then along comes George and whoa, whoa, this is the family don't do
that. We've got to get them all out of the country immediately afterÉ. I
mean this is crazy. Look the rest of the Middle East -- remember why Bin
Laden decided to look at us. Bin Laden didn't start off al Qaeda to take
down the United States. It was to take down the royal family. And then
what happened? We had a Gulf War. The royal family said, and we
concluded, that we should put the Prince Sultan Base in here. We should
base Americans there. And then we became viewed as the sole barrier
between the radicals and the royal family. And keeping the royal family
in power, now we're viewed as their protectors. We're the reason why
this oligarchy exists. We're the reason why there's no democratization.
That's how it's viewed in the Middle East. We're doing the same thing to
a much lesser extent in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak's an old and personal
friend. There is no reform taking place. We should be saying at least
allow local elections. We're not asking you to give up power. We're not
asking you to step down that's a process but at least have municipal
elections.
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Senator Joseph R. Biden (D - Delaware) is the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
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