Why is Trump making his first trip abroad, as president, to Saudi Arabia?
Sunday, May 07, 2017
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by Ahmed
E. Souaiaia*
According to the White House, Trump will travel to Saudi Arabia,
Israel and the Vatican “in an effort to unite Islam, Judaism and
Christianity in the common cause of fighting “intolerance” and radical extremism.”
As reported by the Washington Post, Trump said that he “will begin with
a truly historic gathering in Saudi Arabia with leaders from all across
the Muslim world… We will begin to construct a new foundation of
cooperation and support with our Muslim allies to combat extremism,
terrorism and violence.”
Considering his insistence, as a candidate for the presidency, that terrorism is further qualified as “Islamic radical
extremism”, and his two attempts, as president, to impose a Muslim Ban,
one must ask the question, what gives? Has the White House actually
changed the man as some claim?
If power that comes with the
executive branch of government changes a man, it is unlikely that it
changes him for the better. Power often corrupts. It hardly reforms or
redeems. If it does anything, it teaches people about the tools that
allow them to disguise their true motives: using coded language and
diplomatic speak. But for one to truly change from a misogynist,
xenophobic, overprivileged bigot to an interfaith messiah of tolerance,
one must go through a crisis of the soul. There is no sign that Trump
had gone through such an experience. In fact, the choice of Saudi
Arabia, the least tolerant country in the world, as his first stop
abroad as president, proves that he is the same man he told us he is
throughout the campaign.
Saudi Arabia, too, is ruled by a clan of
misogynist, overprivileged bigots with the ability to turn crude oil
extracted from the depths of the desert into trillions of US dollars
that’d allow them to write history as they see fit. These despotic
rulers, disguising themselves as Custodians of the Two Sanctuaries, ban
women from driving cars or traveling unaccompanied by a male relative,
deprive Saudi religious minorities, like the Shias, their right to
identify themselves as anything except as Saudis, treat foreign labors
with forbidding cruelty and extreme prejudice, and mercilessly bomb
children and mourners in schools and public halls in Yemen. They warmly
welcome the rich and powerful and disdainfully abjure the poor and
vulnerable. They befriend elitists and shirk commoners. Their behavior,
policy, alliances, and temperament are those of a radical supremacist.
Their only contributions to the modern world is a supremacist
creed—Wahhabism—and a genocidal band of fanatics--al-Qaeda (and its
derivatives such as ISIS and al-Nusra). While the rest of the world has
been investing in innovations that save life and the environment, the
rulers of Saudi Arabia have been investing in destructive ideologies and
military hardware. Such rulers cannot and do not represent Muslims.
They represent themselves and the sectarian creed they invented and
imposed on any Muslims disguised as Sunni Islam, which is far from it.
The
similarities between Trump and his entourage and Salman-and-Son define
the adage, birds of the same feather flock together. However, the
similarities alone do not explain the reasons that make Trump and the
Saudi rulers gravitate towards one another. There are important
political and economic reasons that drive this affair between the filthy
rich rulers of the world.
Saudi Arabia needs America’s military
protection and diplomatic support. Some American politicians need a
special kind of Islam and special types of Muslims who serve two
purposes: punching bag when on the campaign trail and a cash machine
when in the White House. Trump played the first card on the campaign
trail when he made the phrase “radical Islamic extremism” a mandatory
refrain of every speech and every interview. He even used that phrase to
beat down his political rivals to submission if they refused to include
the word “Islamic” in conjunction with any reference to terrorism. Now
he needs the cash from the Saudi rulers for protection and for paying
for his ambitions. In return he dropped the word “Islamic” from “radical
Islamic extremism” and honored them by visiting their country
on his first scheduled presidential trip abroad. The cycle will continue
nonetheless. In four years, he will resurrect the word “Islamic” to
brag about degrading “radical Islamic extremism” in Syria and
Iraq and about the hundreds of billions of dollars American companies
had made selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to fight its phantom mortal
enemies.
Four years from now, however, al-Qaeda or some new
version of it will be alive still terrorizing and murdering apostate
Muslims and deviant Shias in some other Muslim land. Trump and other
politicians will continue to preach doom and destruction from this
apocalyptic danger called “radical Islamic extremism” and the Muslim
countries who did nothing about it. These politicians will continue to
use this self-perpetuating myth for as long as people continue to rely
on their short memory to construct narratives for themselves and for the
“other”. The reason politicians are able to use fear of “radical
Islamic extremism” now is because most Americans forgot that it was US
administrations—aided by the Saudi rulers—that produced “radical Islamic
extremism” in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
The existence of a
perverted interpretation of Islam like Wahhabism, which is followed in
Saudi Arabia and espoused by al-Qaeda and its derivatives allows many
Western politicians, especially the ultra-conservatives among them, to
scare the public and then use that fear to get votes to win elections.
Trump masterfully played the threat of “radical Islamic extremism” and
he rode that wave of hateful enthusiasm to the White House. He promised
that he will defeat this threat. But to defeat such a threat, he must
know that he needs to crush it militarily and uproot it ideologically.
The latter part would require him to confront the Saudi rulers, not
elevate them politically. We are, then, left with only one conclusion:
The presence of Saudi “Islam” and al-Qaeda is a political and economic
profitable convenience. The two must be contained and controlled, but
never fully eradicated because they play a critical geopolitical
purpose. With this being the case, Trump’s first visit abroad, as
president, makes complete sense.
___________________________
* Prof.
SOUAIAIA teaches at the University of Iowa. His most recent book,
Anatomy of Dissent in Islamic Societies, provides a historical and
theoretical treatment of rebellious movements and ideas since the rise
of Islam. Opinions are the author’s, speaking on matters of public
interest; not speaking for the university or any other organization with
which he is affiliated.
