Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Needed: A dose of honesty

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 3:53 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

Among my sources of information is the monthly newsletter of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C. The October issue is almost entirely dedicated to denouncing terrorism. Because of the large number of active terrorists coming out of that country, it was an expected denial of government support.

Reading through the newsletter I came to page four, where it reports Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal led that country's delegation to a special meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). From that meeting came a condemnation of terrorism. The newsletter characterizes the conference's report as follows: "The communique rejected the confusion of terrorism with the right of Islamic and Arab peoples, including the Palestinians and the Lebanese, to self-determination, self-defense, sovereignty and resistance to Israel or any other foreign occupation and aggression. These are legitimate rights guaranteed by the UN Charter and by international law."

This is where the same old nonsense of blaming someone else for problems soaked through the newsletter. It's a well-known fact that several shaky Arab governments have pampered and even financed terrorists and pointed them out of their countries and at the United States and Israel. This takes the heat off their far less than democratic governments and uses countries with true freedom as targets.

What was even more interesting is the boldness of writing about supporting self-determination and sovereignty of the Lebanese people. This can be accomplished rather easily if Syria would withdraw its 25,000 troops and undisclosed number of intelligence agents from Lebanon. The Lebanese Christians, what few are still alive, have made this request several times and been ignored by every Arab nation and the world, including the United States.

Several years ago Israel withdrew from Lebanon to a small security zone on its own border. About 18 months ago the Israelis withdrew entirely from Lebanon, only to have Syrian supported Hezbollah terrorists follow them by kidnapping Israelis and causing more trouble.

In the meantime Syrian military muscle remains in Lebanon and the OIC is pointing fingers at the elected legitimate government of Israel.

Let's not forget that Saudi Arabia gave Syria $500 million in bribe money for "helping" it during the Gulf War. Syria sent a token force and wouldn't allow its soldiers to enter Iraq, nor would it allow U.S. planes to over-fly its territory. The money was used to buy sophisticated weapons from Russia, North Korea and China.

Pointing fingers at every other nation has become a well-known tactic of Arab governments. Somebody else is always at fault while these same governments suppress their own people. Professor Edward Said of Columbia University, an Arab, recently wrote, "We must start thinking about ourselves as responsible for the poverty, illiteracy, and repression that have come to dominate our societies, evils that we have allowed to grow despite our complaints about Zionism and imperialism."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, when making his next policy speech, should tell several of his Islamic colleagues they can clean up their acts by caring for the poor and disenfranchised in their own countries. They should quit exporting terrorism in the form of frustrated people willing to blow themselves up. Sending food and promoting opportunities in poorer Islamic nations would do much more for their cause than shipments of terrorists and weapons. Stopping the promotion of self-pity and hatred in many of their schools would also be a step toward world peace.

A large dose of honesty at all levels of government is an elixir badly needed in the Middle East.