Myths and Realities: Saudi Arabia Re-examined
The New Republic Symposium on Public Policy
[Part 2] Question and Answer Session

EDITOR'S NOTE:

The following is a portion of The New Republic's symposium on public policy, entitled, "Myths and Realities: Saudi Arabia Re-examined."  This discussion was held on October 27, 2004.  Introductory remarks were made by Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic.   The panelists included:  Robert Jordan, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Jamie Gorelick, member of the 9/11 Commission; Adam Zagorin, Washington correspondent, Time Magazine; and Faye Bowers, intelligence and national security writer for The Christian Science Monitor.  

This original transcript was produced by the Federal News Service, Inc. and is reprinted here with permission.  

Due to the length of this item it has been divided into two parts.  This is part two which contains the question and answer session.  For the panel presentations, part one, click here.

[Part 2] Question and Answer Session

Martin Peretz: Can I ask Ambassador Jordan a question? When you would go to speak to certain officials urging them to look at the emerging evidence that terrorism was being supported from Saudi Arabia, would there be indifference, incredulity, or what?

Robert Jordan: No. The response was uniformly one of sincerity and cooperation. At the same time, they would say, give us names and give us information, and we'll go round these people up. Part of the problem we had -- and this is reflected in the 9/11 Commission Report as well -- it is so incredibly difficult to get those names.

I dealt with our Treasury Department continually and would continually ask for names and intelligence information that could be shared with the Saudis so that we could nab these individuals, and rarely would we actually have names. When we did, we were able to freeze bank accounts -- in some cases, detain these people. There were a number of people who were under surveillance by the Saudis, but it did not appear feasible to have a case that could be put together to round them up and bring them in. We got better at it.

Martin Peretz: Is the Saudi government so scrupulous about winning a conviction in court?

Robert Jordan: No, I don't mean to imply it that way at all. What I'm saying is, even sufficient probable cause to round these people up was sorely lacking in many instances.

The general counsel of the Department of Treasury, David Aufhauser and I, spent a great deal of time trying to get enough information to give to the Saudis. We were able to get better information as time went on. But, there was not very much evidence on individuals.

By contrast, we did have some real successes on the charity front. For example, the Al Haramain charity finally has been closed. Some would say it has taken about a year too long for that to happen. But, we found that their branches were actually supporting al Qaeda operations in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya, and East Africa. So, those branches were closed down, and the individual head of Al Haramain was finally removed from his position and is now under serious investigation.

But the individuals -- I think this is an area where there needs to be more traction and more activity. The problem we've had is not having enough evidence shared with each other to identify them.

Martin Peretz: Was this a result of American intelligence not having information or not being willing to share information?

Robert Jordan: A little bit of both. In some cases, you don't want to divulge sources and methods, and so we had, frankly, some difficulty in getting information out of our intelligence agencies from time to time. I think the Treasury found some frustrations in that regard. We also did not have -- at least at the beginning -- a sufficient working relationship with the Saudis. What information they had, they were reluctant to share with us. We were reluctant to share with them. So, it took us about a year after 9/11 before we were heading in the right direction in terms of this type of cooperation. It was extremely frustrating.

Martin Peretz: Jamie.

Jamie Gorelick: I would answer that question slightly differently. I think that puts way too much of a burden on the United States. The people with whom we would be asked to share the information were, in some instances, not reliable counterparties. It suggests that the Saudis themselves were blind to what was going on in their country. I don't know what the ground truth is, but I don't believe that because once they felt threatened themselves in 2003, there was a sea change in their activity, which when we were threatened and they felt they were not, they didn't do. There was a long time between September 11, 2001 and the period in 2003 when the Saudis kicked into gear, and I don't think the change was whether we could share bits of information about people on the ground.

The fact is that they were -- and I think still are -- coming to grips with the Faustian bargain that they have made, which is that they have ceded whole parts of their government to religious elements that have either acquiesced then, or worst, fomented the kind of activity, which produces an al Qaeda and which creates the conditions for people who agree with al Qaeda to function not only against ourselves but also against them.

What they need to do is address that bargain, because as Marty asked in -- I thought his first question was terrific -- how could it be that one arm of what they do can endanger the other? They have to come to grips. I think Bob is right in pointing to 2003 as the turning point, but they have to deal with the money that they put out in foreign assistance, the money that they put out in religious assistance, and the acquiescence at a minimum in the funding domestically of elements who are now turning around and destabilizing their own regime.

You know, I would note in this regard that there are real costs. If you talk to American companies who operate in Saudi Arabia -- and Bob can speak to this better than I can -- but just the ones that I talk to are redoubling their efforts in security, both for their personnel and their facilities. Well, if you do that, the costs of doing business and the willingness to do business is heavily affected.�

There are real costs, and I think they have some hard decisions in front of them. I personally would not put the blame for this on the United States and our inability to share individual bits of information with them. I think where there is a will there will be a way.

Robert Jordan: Just for clarification, I'm not putting blame on anyone. I was trying to sort of explain historically what their interchange was, but I certainly agree that the Saudis have got to assume responsibility for identifying individuals. It shouldn't just be up to the United States, of course.

Question & Answer Session Open to the Audience

Martin Peretz: Ladies and gentlemen, the man in the back. This is not because we know that you can't speak to the audience. You're speaking to millions.

Question: I'd like to just better understand the support for terrorism in Saudi Arabia. Just characterize that support. Who they are? You mentioned the religious element. Are they growing? Where were they before 9/11? What's changed? So, we can get at the root cause, which is the support for the terrorists rather than the terrorists themselves.

Martin Peretz: I open it up to the panel.. ..Okay, Adam?

Adam Zagorin: I wrote down a recent intelligence estimate before I came here. You can take that for what it's worth. I guess the population is about 20 some million.. ..There seems to be some agreement that there would be between 500 and 1,500 hardcore activists. Now, that's a range that differs by a factor of three, right -- 500 to 1,500, but compared to the 20 million, it's a very minuscule figure. On the other hand, you don't need more than five people or even maybe less to commit some atrocity. There's obviously been some of that.

My sense is that there is a great deal of work to be done, and the trick here will be to maintain the discipline in these efforts going forward not just next month and next year but forever because the situation lends itself to the lack of the kind of institutional political structure and lends itself to having these problems potentially continue unless vigilance is maintained.

But, I do think there's probably a very large number of people in Saudi Arabia who are not thrilled about the United States, not thrilled about U.S. support of Israel, not thrilled about our invasion of Iraq, and not thrilled about the visas, and you can just go on and on. But, I think that the number of those people who actually are happy to see Osama bin Laden killing people and the violence, especially giving that there are Saudi victims of these activities in the Kingdom. I think that those people are quite limited in the ones who are happy to see that kind of thing happening.

Also, we do have -- for what it's worth and it's probably worth quite a bit at the moment -- joint centers where Saudis and American security people sit side-by-side in Riyadh at undisclosed locations. So, the communication problems that Ambassador Jordan talked about, where one side knows something and the other side doesn't -- by the time they figure out what it is that they both know, you know, some other thing that's happened. This is people analyzing things together and actually pulling on the same oar in the same room at the same time, and that's going on in the security area and also, to some degree as well, in the financial area.

That's encouraging. It's just that, again, to sustain this over time and to appear that there's such a level of U.S.-Saudi collaboration that it causes a backlash publicly among the public there who objects to these other U.S. policies. It's a delicate balance, but I think that the Kingdom is not overrun with violent, plotting anti-Americans. There are plenty of Anti-Americans, but they're not violent and plotting.

Martin Peretz: But, it seems a little implausible. There's nothing I know, but my guess is that there are more than 1,500 sleeper people in Madrid. I mean I just came back from Europe. First of all, they've arrested almost that number.

Faye Bowers: Okay, I wanted to add on a little bit to what Adam said from when I was there in December. I spoke with three intelligence officials who were participating in that joint counterterrorism center. I think bottom line, truth be told, they don't know how many terrorists there are. Accurate numbers were never kept of people who went to the training camps in Afghanistan in the '80s or '90s and who returned. For a long time, I think Saudi Arabia didn't believe it had a problem with terrorism or with extremism. They didn't see it until after those May and November attacks that everyone talks about. But you know, the intelligence officials told me when I was there -- there could be six, there could be 60, there could be 600, or 600,000. So, that's not a very comforting figure.

The other thing I found in terms of talking to people -- normal Saudis -- not one of them seemed to be for terror attacks for sure and wasn't thrilled with what Osama bin Laden was doing in their part of the world. But, they also were extremely angry at the United States' foreign policy. Every person I spoke with without exception had to sort of vent for the first few minutes that I was with them. While I was there, Saddam Hussein was captured. It was on their mind -- American policy toward Iraq and the Palestinians especially. It was at the time where the United States was really pressuring Saudi Arabia to make changes in their educational system, to change their textbooks, to go after the religious leaders, and to come forward and make statements against terrorism and for cooperating with the United States.

Overall, the people, I think, are really against terrorism, but they're really also against U.S. foreign policy, and they have sympathy toward groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as giving to charity is part of their culture. Almost everyone told me that they contribute independently to those kinds of groups because of the anger they feel toward U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Robert Jordan: Well, to get back to the question of where do these terrorists come from and how did this all get started, I think you do have to flash back about 20 years to the joint U.S.-Saudi efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was part of American foreign policy to encourage Islamist extremists to wage jihad against the godless communists who had invaded Afghanistan. So, there was a great deal of cooperation between our government and the Saudis to encourage these young men to go off to these camps and to fight in Afghanistan. The best estimate is somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 young Saudi men had gone off to do this.

The Soviets were then kicked out; so, what happens? A number of them started wandering back. A number of them tried to look for some other cause. At this moment, it was almost like a perfect storm of converging realities here. You had an education system that had been influenced by the Muslim brotherhood from Egypt and a number of teachers who had been kicked out of Egypt and Syria for being too extremist. They find their way to Saudi Arabia, and they have 20 years of teaching.

MR. .. : Some of them went to the United States.

Robert Jordan: And, some went to the United States. They have 20 years of teaching. You have a demographic time bomb and one of the highest birth rates in the world. You have almost half the population, at this point, under the age of 15. It's a nation of kids. So, you have the jihadis coming back and you have Osama bin Laden wanting to essentially become an outsourcing organization to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He went to the Saudi government and asked if he could be sort of a militia to kick out Saddam Hussein. The Saudis turned him down and brought a half-a-million U.S. troops in instead, and this boiled the water even further.

You also have a declining per capita income -- it's about a quarter of what is was in the 1980s. You have a burgeoning population without job skills; you have angry young men who can't get jobs, and therefore can't get married or even talk to a female. It is a cauldron that bubbles and boils. So now, we're seeing, perhaps far too late, the efforts by the Saudi government to put the genie back in the bottle, and we're going to have to be supportive of that, but only time will tell if we'll have any success. But that's frankly how it all got started. The 9/11 Commission Report is very good in its summary of this.

Jamie Gorelick: I agree with Bob's recitation of the history. I think it's very helpful to look back and see what has happened. The only point I would make here is that if we focus only on those of whatever number are the hardcore individuals dedicated to terrorism, we're really missing the larger and more dangerous picture. We, in our 9/11 Commission Report, are very explicit about this -- that there are two problems. There are the hardcore individuals, the religious zealots, who have objectified Westerners and who have identified us -- who refuse to convert to their form of religion or abide by their policy dictates -- as people who essentially don't deserve to live. The only way to deal with them is to kill or capture them. They're not going to be retrievable.

The larger problem, in our view -- or at least as large -- is this approval of that behavior and the sense that it is justified. It's not just the fact that that approval is manifested in monetary support for terrorist activities or for imams who spew hate. It is that if we don't address those atmospherics, we will increasingly permit a view within the larger society that we are a greater threat than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I think that's what you have here. If we don't address that, we have a very large problem and a generational threat to us in the hostility that one finds in various places in the Muslim world.

We are -- and I think Faye had it right - in some places despised, and this is in a country where we were very well regarded and where the two populations were very close. I just don't think we can afford that. We have in our book a fairly long discussion of this and of the ways in which we have to regain the moral high ground, where we have to find common values, and where we have to dissuade the larger populations.

If you look at the Pew data -- and I'm not suggesting that we make our foreign policy or any decisions for that matter based on polls -- but it is pretty striking that after 9/11 and even after the invasion of Afghanistan, which had the support of much of the Muslim world because it was viewed as justified, our standing in the world was very high and there was a unity of purpose, I think, around the world to address the threat of terrorism.

In the last couple of years, that has changed dramatically. So, if you look at places like Turkey, which is our -- in many ways -- strongest ally in the region, our standing has dropped from somewhere like two-thirds of the population to 20 percent. In Egypt, which is the second largest recipient of our foreign aid for 20 years, we are at the zero approval level, and I guess that's within the margin of error of two percent. It could be two percent or maybe it's minus two percent. But, it's still pretty low. You see this around the Muslim world. I think that that is a recipe for even greater disaster, so I would not focus only on the smaller dedicated group.

I would just make one anecdotal remark. My experience with domestic terrorism suggests that the societal attitudes are important. When we were experiencing abortion clinic bombings and murders in this country, they seemed unstoppable because there would be Web sites where doctors who performed abortions would have big Xs through their faces, and there was essentially a hit list out there. The murder stopped when the Catholic Church in Boston -- after a particularly egregious event in Boston -- said, this has to stop. This is not the way that that we treat people however we think about abortion. We do not take lives. The fact is that it stopped after that. Now, I'm not saying there's some - to use a bad phrase in this regard -- magic bullet, but I do think that it is very important to address these societal attitudes.

MR. .. : Yes.

Question: I was just hoping you might explore with a little more granularity a few of the particular sources of anti-American attitudes in Saudi Arabia. I'm curious, for instance, to what extent does the -- when you refer to the broader context -- population or a substantial segment of it sympathize with the objectives of Al Qaeda if not the methods. For instance, establishing a Sunni Wahhabi dominated caliphate extending from North Africa through Central Asia --

MR. .. : Don't forget Spain.

Question: Yes, well absolutely -- and Austria, I guess. They may have something to say about it if that ever is on their doorstep. To what extent, for instance, is the hostility against the U.S. intervention in Iraq motivated principally by a concern that a democratic Iraq will be Shi'ite dominated given tribal tensions that the status quo ante was a comfortable known as objectionable as it appeared to be on other grounds?

Martin Peretz: Anybody?

Faye Bowers: I have a couple of responses to that. One is that I don't think the people are a monolith. I think we sort of have a perception here in America that everyone in Saudi Arabia is devoutly, rabidly religious. I don't think they all share the same level of devoutness at all.

I think the other thing that really formed perceptions, when I was there in December, was television. You know, they watch 24-hour cable like we do, but they see different pictures than we do. For example, in Iraq, they were seeing pictures of Iraqis being murdered every day -- of Iraqi women, and children, and young men, and various things like that.

In the Palestinian territories, the same thing -- day and day out, they are seeing the assassinations, they were seeing the -- what they would call -- Israeli offensiveness toward Palestinians. They saw that daily, and I think it has a really wearing effect on people. Then, they also see what they see to be total, unqualified U.S. support for those activities. It angers people, I felt, to no end. You know, they don't come out and say, "Oh, we support Osama bin Laden, and we want this broad caliphate from here to here and we want it to include el Andelus, by the way, too." I didn't hear anyone say anything like that, but it was more anger toward the United States and Israel.

Martin Peretz: I want to say something about the continuous allusions to Israel. There are about 25,000 Palestinians in Saudi Arabia. My own sense is certainly that in the elite, nobody gives a damn about the Palestinians. There is, in fact, the kind of inter-ethnic contempt for the Palestinians that I have never heard in Israel itself. Now, you know, there are a lot of Palestinian refugees around in the Middle East. They cannot go to Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, it is so difficult for a Palestinian to get Saudi citizenship. There are what you have to call racist laws against Saudi Arabian citizenship for Palestinians.

Now, I'm not saying that you get bombarded with images, and it doesn't have an effect. If you see Al Jazeera, you live in a different world than you live in this country. But, it's a little too simple, it seems to me that there are interests in America who are organizing to say, "Well, if you could only get the Israelis to stop doing this." Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a column in The New York Times the other day that if you could get Israel to do this, and this, and this, then the Arabs will actually send soldiers to Iraq, and Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions. That's crap.

Robert Jordan: Let me just add one sort of data point on the Palestinians. I think a lot of what you say is accurate about the way Palestinians are viewed in Saudi society, in terms of those who are actually in the kingdom. I think it's not totally correct to say that a lot of --

Martin Peretz: Those are wonderful Palestinians. Actually, they are teachers and doctors.

Robert Jordan: You bet. Well, they do a lot of things, but that's correct. They're well educated in many instances. But, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has spent a great deal of money on hospitals and hospital care for injured Palestinian children who actually are brought to Saudi Arabia for treatment. It doesn't mean that there's a "kumbayah" spirit going on necessarily. But, what it does mean is that I think they are expending some resources. As many of you know, they had one of these telethons where they raised a gazillion dollars for the children of martyrs, and martyrs included suicide bombers, and this was a very controversial issue between us at the time.

But, I think that the greater point isn't whether it's rational or correct for someone in Saudi Arabia to have this attitude that America is too close to Israel. What we're really doing here is reporting on the reality and then how do we deal with it. I think the reality is that these are the attitudes that we see. The Pew research and other polling data show us this.

So, what do you do to turn the hearts and minds around? I think the 9/11 Commission Report, again, has some pretty good suggestions in that regard. It requires soft diplomacy, and soft power. It requires citizen exchanges. It requires a smarter visa policy in the United States to let the students back in if they can be cleared for security reasons. It requires reaching out to both societies instead of what I fear is happening, which is kind of a mutual disgust with each other right now, and I think that is the great danger in the relationship.

Jamie Gorelick: I would just add one comment here. We looked at this issue of whether the hostility is the product of our policies or the product of this mix of political and religious zeal. We certainly did not conclude that if we changed our policies, this problem would go away. I mean we took a lot of care in writing that section of the report because the fact is that you could throw Israel over the brink today, and it would not stop this group at all.

Now, that's not to say that we as a country should not be faulted for not being as engaged as we should be in trying to foster peace in the Middle East, and I think that there are many in the Muslim world who see our disengagement from the peace process in a negative way. Faye is certainly right that if you look at what bin Laden predicted -- that the United States' interests in the Muslim world were to kill Muslims and humiliate them -- when they see pictures from the war in Iraq and when they see reports from Abu Ghraib prison, he looks like he was right, and we look like we were wrong. We need to understand that. That's not to say anything about our decision to go into Iraq other than you have to understand how it will be viewed and the critical stakes that we had in the aftermath in handling it correctly.

So, I think it is a false choice to say, "Is it our policy, or is it a religious zealotry, or political religious zealotry?" It's both. If you only see one piece of it, you're going to miss the fuller and more accurate picture.

Robert Jordan: Just to back that up, which was a very perceptive comment, evidence can be seen in the fact that one of Al Qaeda's principle demands was that the United States withdraw its military troops from Saudi Arabia. We announced in the first week in May 2003 that we were pulling out of Prince Sultan Air Base. The next week, we had the three suicide bombings at the housing compounds in Riyadh. It didn't make a bit of difference that we were pulling our troops out. Al Qaeda was still on the march, and it hasn't deterred them in the slightest.

Question: Several of you mentioned individual reformists that you spoke with in Saudi Arabia or have known, and, of course, we have read about some of the very preliminary steps that the Saudi government has taken in terms of local elections. But, my specific question -- and perhaps this is best directed toward Ambassador Jordan since you were there for two or three years not too long ago. Is your sense of the Saudi Majlis Ash Shura, because this is the consultative body, that on the one hand, it would be very easy to write it off as an appointed body but that has also shown signs of some activism, some independence? And also, any of the comments the panelists might have on local elections in Saudi Arabia because, with some hesitancy, the Saudis do seem to be moving, albeit very slowly, on that front. Thanks.

Robert Jordan: Yes, that's an important question. To start with the local elections, they are now scheduled for February. Registration to vote will begin next month. Unfortunately, it appears that women will not be allowed to vote or to run for office, even though one woman had announced her campaign to run already.

Apparently, the give and take within the royal family, calibrating exactly how far they can go without losing traction with their people, has at least for the moment, stalled the ability to include woman in this round. There is a lot of hope that they will be included in future rounds.

The plan is, after these elections are held for half of the municipal council seats, that in due course, there will also then be elections for half of the regional council seats, and ultimately half of the Majlis Ash Shura. That is perhaps further down the line than we would like, but one of the things that is actually happening in the Majlis is, that even though they are an appointed body -- they actually have one Shi'a representative in there right now who is a very well respected business man -- and they are getting increasing power. They're getting power to review the budget. They're getting power to interrogate cabinet ministers, and in fact, about a year-and-a-half ago, they were reviewing certain pieces of legislations including a tax bill. They disapproved the tax bill. Well, the council of ministers had it within its power to overrule them, but they chose not to.

So, these are just little data points again to suggest that the Majlis is gaining in stature. They have committees -- like they have a foreign relations committee -- I've met with their committees from time to time -- and the plan is to increase the size of the Majlis to about 200 people. It's about 160 right now. So, this is an important development and one that I think we need to delicately nurture without, again, putting the kiss of death on it by too much grandstanding about how wonderful this progress is.

Faye Bowers: I would like to just add a couple of things about that. In the upcoming elections, I think from women I've talked to there -- and I have a very good friend and colleague who is a Saudi journalist who writes now occasionally for our paper. She wrote the story about the woman who had initiated her own campaign, and it was quite disappointing that she won't be able to run. But, this woman also told me -- and from women that I spoke to in their homes in Saudi Arabia -- this sort of presents another side of the picture for you -- is that women there don't want the process to go too quickly either. That's sort of shocking to me as a woman to find that they maybe don't want to go too fast. But, that is what many of them said.

Then, I think also after Saudi Arabia announced that women couldn't run, they did announce that maybe after the February elections they would appoint a number of women to that council. Also, about the Majlis -- when I was there, the council had appointed three women advisors, which they didn't want to talk about too much publicly, but I got to meet with the women advisors, and they were gaining an incredible amount of power.
At first, they were just consulted about women's issues, such as breastfeeding in public or things like that. But after a while, they were given much more, like foreign policy questions.

My point is that there is movement forward, I think, in all of these areas. I think in some respects quite impressive. Again, for us, I think we feel it's at a snail's pace. For them, these are earthshaking differences. This one woman I spoke with -- who is now an advisor to the Majlis -- she is a renowned international ophthalmologist, and we guess in her early forties. When she was born, her mother was 13-years-old and was put in arranged marriages. She was illiterate. They didn't have girl schools in Saudi Arabia then. Those didn't open, I believe, until 1962. So, this woman's mother had four daughters by the time she was 19-years-old and moved to the United States with her husband, who had some sort of government job here in the United States. So, all the girls and the mother were educated in the United States, and all four girls have post-graduate degrees and have gone back to Saudi Arabia and are working for women's issues. It was an incredible story.

Robert Jordan: She, in fact, is the head of the ophthalmology department at her hospital.

Faye Bowers: That's right. She's also the head of the seat at Johns Hopkins now as well.

Adam Zagorin: I just wanted to mention a little bit, in a way, about the sociology of all this. Here in this country, we've got -- like it or don't like it -- we've got the gay marriage business; we've got garbage on television in many places or what some people feel is garbage; and we've got various cases of corruption. The United States, despite being the richest Western country, continues to hurdle forward -- or whatever direction you want to call it -- socially. This creates tensions, which lead to reaction. So, you have in this country social conservatives and even lots of other people who are appalled by the latest manifestation of modernity in our midst.

Well, if you think about that and then you think about a very traditional and in some ways almost feudal arrangement that you would have in Saudi Arabia -- you need to think of the pace of change that these people are going through. Now, people have studied traditional societies undergoing Westernization. There are studies on this, and it is a stressful thing to live in a society that is rapidly Westernizing. What you tend to see is all the things that are associated with stress and anxiety -- higher levels of addiction and alcohol consumptions, breakups, and shifts from the large family to small family.

Now, the thing that Jamie said a minute ago -- I mean, you could pitch Israel over the brink. You could eliminate the invasion of Iraq. You have an anxious environment in any country where you have this rapid pace of change with respect to the family, with respect to religion, and it's really fairly typical that there would be some kind of a reaction to that in the society from conservative and fundamental elements. Having said that, I personally believe that Osama bin Laden and his vision of the future has virtually nothing to offer. I think that the way that he addresses the problems and some of the predictable social issues in Saudi Arabia just doesn't really offer much of anything.

Now, in this time of anxiety, some people have certainly turned to him. But, it's very difficult to imagine a regime that had anything akin to his outlook that would provide jobs, that would ease this transition in a meaningful way, or that would assist the people who are upset. So, you have this anxious environment in which people seize on Israel and these other things. It's not that they're not issues, but they become flashpoints, I think, for a generalized anxiety, which is going to be there with or without those things. If it weren't that, it would be something else.

Martin Peretz: I want to ask Bob question. It's a historical question. The transfer of wealth from 1973, 10 years on, from the West to Saudi Arabia was enormous. An economic historian I know at Harvard says that it was larger than the transfer of wealth to Spain in the age of discovery. Why was so little made of it?

Robert Jordan: I'm not sure we ever see historical phenomena while we're in the middle of them. It takes a while to digest. What we did see, though, was an enormous change in the early to mid-'80s. The per capita income in Saudi Arabia was about $28,000, which is about what it was in the United States at that time. Now, it's about $8,000, which is a little bit more than it is in Mexico.

So, they've both ramped up, and now, they have gone back down on a per capita basis. But, I think you just don't see these phenomena sometimes when you're in the middle of them. I'm not sure how history will judge the transition that we're in right now, or when people went through the Industrial Revolution. When do you see those transitions taking place?

Martin Peretz: This certainly was a tremendous opportunity that was forfeited.

Robert Jordan: Of course.

Martin Peretz: One more question.

Question: Since 9/11, I have become a student of Arabic affairs, and I've heard every expert anybody can name in the room discussing some of the fundamental issues. I am truly mystified as to what the outlook is for any positive result in our relationship with Saudi Arabia and lots of other countries that are Islamic. It just seems to me, we see the world so differently that just the very idea that Americans are raised with cutting a deal is just not possible. It's just not the way they think.

Martin Peretz: Anybody want to take this one?

Robert Jordan: I'll take a stab at that.

Martin Peretz: Tackle that cactus. [Laughter.]

MR. .. : To pick up on your final metaphor there about cutting a deal, this is a part of the world that is very used to cutting deals of all kinds. If you look at the history of Islam, there have been any numbers of internal religious debates. Obviously, there's the Shi'ite, Sunni split. There was this bab al-ijtihad, the door of enlightenment, which opened where they were Greek-influenced debates and scholars within the religion.

Now, obviously, the headlines have gone, with very good reason, to some of the extremist elements. Without trying to deny for one second the extremely disturbing tendencies of the extremist elements and many of their fellow travelers and supporters, there are a lot of reasonable people in the Islamic world who just want to get on with business, and they want to be respected. I don't think they're that much different than we are, and they certainly are skilled in having relations with other groups, cutting deals, and all the rest.

I mean there is a gap. It will probably take a generation to work through this fix that we seem to be in now. I think it could be fixed because if you look at their history and the way that they do business, it suggests that they like to fix things when it's in their interest to do so.

Martin Peretz: Bob, the last speaker.

Robert Jordan: Well, the hill is an extremely steep hill to climb, but I do think there are some points of hopefulness. One of the most important things that I worked on during my tenure as ambassador was Saudi accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), not because it was doing them a favor but because it is in the United States' interest to see a stabilization and a rule of law that is implemented in their trade relations. This will require them to open up to foreign investment. They have already passed most of the major legislation that is required for qualification to the WTO. They are awaiting the bilateral agreement with the United States.

It is, in my view, critical for their social and political development that this accession be successful. They would come into the family of WTO nations. There will be more job opportunities for women, the birth rate will be affected, and ultimately, the political and social life of the country will be affected as well. So, I think there is hope in that regard. There is hope in this election situation they're talking about, and there is considerable interest in reform as we heard today.

I would also broaden this to the entire Gulf and Arab world. I think we are seeing some very hopeful developments in places like Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and certainly in the Emirates. We have a bilateral trade agreement that has been executed with Morocco. We have another one with Bahrain that will be before the Congress. We had a rule of law conference in Bahrain hosted by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. So, there are hopeful points, and it does the Arabs and Muslims a disservice to imply that they're not capable of grasping these issues and moving their societies forward. There are enormous impediments, particularly in Saudi Arabia, but I think we've got to find ways to be supportive without being intrusive.

Faye Bowers: I just want to add one last thing. To me, it's particularly helpful to look at other people as people like yourself. I think when you engage man-to-man or woman-to-woman with people in that part of the world, they're just like we are. Moms have concerns about their kids going to school, getting a good education and getting a job at the end of that time. They worry about their boys maybe being exposed to extremism or radical views. But, they have the same sorts of wishes and motives that we do. I think it really helps a lot to look at people as just people like us.

Martin Peretz: Thank you, panel. Thank you, guests. This is the fourth of a series. There will be another one soon. Thank you.

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