How do you handle a "friend" as frustrating as Saudi Arabia? What kind of news coverage does this "friend" deserve, week after week, in the mainstream American press?
Yes, those are scare quotes meant to signal doubt because Saudi reciprocity seems to me as shaky as that of any of Washington's so-called allies.
Its religious, political and social values are opposite those of every Western democracy, including, of course, the United States. The ruling family, the House of Saud spends billions to spread its ultra-conservative brand of Wahhabi Sunni Islam across the Muslim world and is at the center of just about every intra-Muslim conflict across the Middle East, the latest -- but certainly not the most inconsequential -- of which is Yemen, where the long-building Shia-Sunni confrontation could reach a horrific climax.
But even as its policies toward women are criticized continually in the West, the same Western nations rush to do business with the ridiculously oil rich, theocratic monarchy -- putting profits before principles at virtually every opportunity.
That's why the spate of stories the past several weeks concerning the Swedish foreign minister's publicly calling out the Saudis on political and women's rights were to my thinking a refreshing change of pace. Not only did Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom criticize policies, she directly blamed the Saudi royal family for the state of affairs, a rarity in the coded language of international diplomacy.
What? You say you're not familiar with this story?
