"..February
14, 2005, marks the 60th anniversary of the
historic meeting between Saudi Arabia's King
Abdulaziz and then U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt aboard the cruiser USS Quincy at
Great Bitter Lake in Egypt. These two
visionary leaders forged an enduring
relationship that has weathered many
challenges from the Cold War to the terrorism
we face today.."
Frances
Townsend
Editor's
Note:
Last
week Ms. Frances Townsend, President Bush's
Homeland Security Advisor, representing the
United States at the recent Counter
Terrorism conference in Riyadh, noted the
upcoming anniversary of FDR's and Ibn Saud's
meeting and the importance of the event. In
observance of the 60th anniversary of the
meeting and the "enduring
relationship" that resulted, we are
pleased to begin a presentation of essays,
articles and interviews that address this
seminal event in US-Saudi diplomatic history.
We start today with an excerpt from
"Inside the Mirage, America's Fragile
Partnership with Saudi Arabia," by Thomas
Lippman. It was originally circulated to
SUSRIS readers February 14, 2004.
60th
Anniversary of Historic Meeting between King
Abdulaziz and President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt
Excerpt
from Inside
the Mirage by Thomas W. Lippman (pages
27-29)
To
the rest of the world, Saudi Arabia was still
largely unknown and the Middle East a sideshow
in the great war against the Axis powers, but
the Americans were soon to see how the
country's profile had been elevated in the
official Washington. On February 14,
1945, Abdul Aziz met President Roosevelt
aboard the USS 
Quincy in Egypt's Great
Bitter Lake. Photographs of that
encounter - the king in his robes, laughing as
he talked, and Roosevelt, listening intently,
only two months from death, his famous cloak
over his shoulders - were published around the
world.
The
arrangements for that meeting were as
complicated as the two cultures were
different. The king wanted to bring his
own sheep, for example, because he believe
that good Muslims eat only freshly killed
meat. When the USS Murphy arrived
in Jeddah to ferry the royal party to Egypt,
the king appeared with forty-eight traveling
companions, although Americans had said they
could accommodate no more than ten. The
Arabs insisted on sleeping in tents pitched on
deck rather than in cabins. Yet the two
leaders appreciated each other and developed a
mutual respect in their conversations, a
rapport that papered over it - reconcilable
views about Palestine. The king, a large
man who used a can because he had difficulty
walking, was grateful for a spontaneous gift
from the president: the spare wheelchair
that traveled with him.
 The
impresario of that meeting was Colonel William
A. Eddy, who had succeeded Moose as resident
U.S. minister in the summer of 1944.
Eddy was born in Lebanon in 1896, a son and
grandson of Presbyterian missionaries.
He grew up speaking Arabic, and was the
interpreter at the meeting between Roosevelt
and Abdul Aziz. In the photographs, he
is the tall man in U.S. Marine Corps uniform,
his face turned away from the camera.
Eddy,
a decorated combat veteran of World War I,
held a doctorate from Princeton. In the
1920s, he lived in Egypt, where 
he taught at the American University in Cairo.
He is said to have introduced basketball to
Egypt. He rejoined the Marines during
World War II and was posted to Cairo as naval
attaché. According to an Aramco
biographical sketch, he later "became one
of General William J. 'Wild Bill' Donovan's
most energetic and gifted OSS intelligence
agents."24 Most of what
we know about the meeting of Roosevelt and
Abdul Aziz is drawn from Eddy's account F.D.R.
Meets Ibn Saud, a monograph published in
1954.
 In
his opening paragraph, Eddy describes the king
as "one of the great men of the twentieth
century. He won his kingdom and united
his people by his personal leadership.
He possessed those epic qualities of the
leader which Samuel recognized in Saul; he
excelled in the common tasks which all must
perform. He was taller, his shoulders
were broader, he was better hunter, a braver
warrior, more skillful in wielding a knife
whether in personal combat or in skinning
sheep; he excelled in following the tracks of
camels and finding his way in the
desert."
 Eddy's
account of the voyage from Jeddah harbor to
Great Bitter Lake aboard the Murphy is
quiet droll: "A good time was had
by all except me," he wrote, because it
was his responsibility to sort out the
cultural clashes. Not only did the king
insist on bringing sheep but he demanded that
the American sailors join him in eating them,
in accordance with the laws of Arab
hospitality. He was deterred only when
informed that the crew was prohibited by Navy
regulations from eating anything except the
military rations provided for them:
Surely he did not wish to see these fine young
men sent to the brig!
The
king inspected with interest the ship's
armaments and navigational devices. His
sons and others in his party had more
frivolous interests: They were
fascinated by a movie shown in the crew
quarters that featured Lucille Ball
"loose in a college men's dormitory late
at night, barely surviving escapades in which
her dress is ripped off."
In
his talks with Roosevelt, Eddy wrote, the king
did not even hint at any desire for financial
assistance. "He traveled to the
meeting seeking friends and not funds,"
and that is what he got, despite the arguments
about Palestine and Jewish immigration.
The king's view was that if the suffering of
the Jews had been caused by the Germans,
Germans should pay the price for it; let the
Jews build their homeland on the best lands in
Germany, not on the territory of Arabs who had
nothing to do with what happened to them.
The most he could get from Roosevelt was a
promise that the president would "do
nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs
and would make no move hostile to the Arab
people." The king taking this as a
commitment from the United States and not just
from Roosevelt personally, was furious to
discover three years later that Harry Truman
did not consider himself bound by it.
 Inside
the Mirage: America's Fragile
Partnership with Saudi Arabia
By
Thomas W. Lippman
Book
Description
The
60-year marriage of convenience between Saudi
Arabia and the United States is in
trouble--with potentially rocky consequences
for the United States and its relationship to
Islam.
The
relationship between the United States and
Saudi Arabia has always been a marriage of
convenience, not affection. As the result of a
bargain struck between President Roosevelt and
Saudi Arabia's founding king in 1945,
Americans bought Saudi Arabian oil, and the
Saudis bought American: American planes,
American weapons, American construction
projects, and American know-how. In exchange,
the Saudis got modernization, education, and
security. The marriage of convenience suited
both sides. But how long can it last? In Inside
the Mirage, journalist Thomas Lippman
shows that behind the cheerful picture of
friendship and alliance, there is a grimmer,
grimier tale of experience and repression.
Saudi Arabia is changing as younger people
less enamored of America rise to prominence.
And the United States, scorched by Saudi-based
terrorism, is forced to rethink this bargain
as it continues to play the dominant role in
the ever-volatile, ever-shifting Middle East.
With so much at stake, this compelling and
absolutely necessary account looks at the
relationship between these two countries, and
their future with one another.
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