The idea that members of the Saudi elite knew about 9/11 beforehand, which the film at least hints at, is ridiculous. They would not have been in America if they had had any inkling of the plot, since anyone could foresee that they would be in danger from an enraged U.S. public. Moore admits that the Saudi government is heavily invested in the United States and, in fact, criticizes the extent of the investments, which most sources vastly overestimate. (No one who knows anything serious about economics would, in any case, consider it a bad thing that the Saudis put money into the U.S. economy.) So why, even if one discounted the genuine liking for America and Americans among educated Saudis, would they want to destroy the value of their own portfolios?

Bin Laden announced his goal of overthrowing the Saudi royal family and had his Saudi citizenship revoked in the early 1990s. The Saudi establishment plays hardball with such challengers. Although one often hears that 13 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudis, the statistic is meaningless. Nineteen persons is not a big enough number on which to base any generalization. The brains of the operation were an Egyptian, a Lebanese and a Baluchi from Pakistan brought up in Kuwait. Bin Laden clearly chose the Saudis he sent on the mission, for the most part just muscle to control the passengers, precisely in the hope of disrupting American-Saudi friendship. The al-Qaida members chosen, in exile in Qandahar, would have been shot on sight if they had shown up in Riyadh.

Moore and others also charge that the Saudi royal family has a special relationship with the Bush family. As Max Rodenbeck argued in the New York Review of Books, this charge is mainly based on circumstantial evidence that does not hold up well to scrutiny. Most of the Saudi investments or contracts cited have to do with defense corporations, one of which has been training royal bodyguards for decades. Some of these firms were owned for a time by the Carlyle Group, on the board of which George H.W. Bush served. But the Saudi relationship with the firms preexisted the Carlyle purchase of them and survived its sale of them. It is certainly true that the Saudis cultivate American leaders, but like all good lobbyists, they do so on a bipartisan basis.

The real question is how Abdullah, who has set policy for some time, differs from his now-deceased predecessor. Any comparison between the two would favor Abdullah.

In contrast to the new king's fair-minded caution, the hawk-faced Fahd never met an adventure he did not love. Saudi Arabia reaped a windfall when the price of petroleum quadrupled in the 1970s. Fahd, the power behind the throne from 1975 and formally king from 1982, energetically set about modernizing his society, even to the point of educating women. The amassing of petroleum billions made the kingdom, however, both a threat and a prize. Fahd responded to the revolutions and invasions of 1979 not with the cautious diplomacy of his predecessors, but an audacious set of covert actions aimed at reshaping the world to make it safe for Saudi oil billionaires.

In 1979 Muslim fundamentalists and millenarians rose up in the holy city of Mecca, and the rebellion was put down only with some difficulty. In the same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a shaky communist military dictatorship that had come to power in a 1978 coup. Also in 1979, the radical theocratic republican, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came to power in Iran. Khomeini, a Shiite, taught that monarchy is incompatible with Islam. If Khomeini's ideas spread across the sectarian divide to Sunni Islam, they could pose as dire a threat to the Saudi monarchy as did communism.

Fahd was a ruler of a small, defenseless country, and the only weapon he had was money. The Saudi population in 1980 was probably only 5 million, not counting guest workers. But between 1973 and 1980, annual government oil revenues jumped from $4.3 billion to $101.8 billion, in U.S. dollars. Fahd made the fateful decision to seek the security umbrella of the United States.

In exchange for sophisticated U.S. weaponry such as AWACS spy planes, F-15 accessories and Stinger shoulderheld missiles, he signed on to President Ronald Reagan's creation of anti-communist militias -- in effect private terrorist armies -- giving them Saudi money in Nicaragua, Angola and Ethiopia, and vastly increasing aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Although Saudi officials deny a formal relationship to Osama bin Laden, who was a fundraiser for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets, it seems that he did have a relationship to Saudi intelligence in Pakistan. Some say that bin Laden was recruited as a fundraiser by Fahd's nephew, Turki al-Faisal, the then-minister of intelligence. (Abdullah recently appointed al-Faisal as the Saudi ambassador to Washington.)

Fahd mirrored Reagan administration policy in backing Saddam Hussein ("my brother," "my sword") against Khomeinist Iran. He gave Saddam around $25 billion to help prosecute the Iran-Iraq war. Then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Fahd allowed himself to be convinced that Saddam posed a threat to Riyadh, and cooperated against Iraq in the Gulf War. In the aftermath, he gave the United States use of Prince Sultan Air Base on a long-term basis, incurring the wrath of pious Muslims who felt that the holy land was thus defiled and that the Saudi royal family had reduced itself to puppets. Among the outraged was bin Laden, who declared war on the Saudi dynasty years before he declared war on the United States and Israel. Fahd stripped bin Laden of his citizenship and banned him from the kingdom.

Fahd's adventurism, combined with Reagan's, helped create the al-Qaida network and reinforced the Iraqi Baath Party, with the results that we see today. His stroke in 1995 left him without the judgment to gauge the tragic aftermath of those decisions.

King Abdullah must labor to deal with the legacy of his predecessor. He faces significant internal unrest, though its extent is probably exaggerated by outsiders. He must deal with the threat of the Saudi al-Qaida organization, which has conducted several terror strikes in Riyadh and elsewhere. He is menaced by the instability in Iraq, which could easily spill over into the kingdom. He must find a way to open up Saudi politics to wider participation at a time when the restive educated middle classes are growing rapidly. (The kings of Egypt and Iran, Farouk and the Shah, faced the same imperative much earlier, and both failed.)

His relationship with the United States needs repair. Unfortunately, it is not clear that Turki al-Faisal, the former chief of intelligence who repeatedly met with bin Laden in the 1980s and as late as 1997, is the right man for that job. Many in Washington may see al-Faisal as tainted by his past associations.

However, the conjuncture of increased Indian and Chinese demand for oil, along with the uncertainties introduced by the ongoing Iraq war, have helped push petroleum prices to historic highs. This development gives Abdullah a windfall of unexpected resources to expend on the problems if he can muster the vision to resolve them.

What approach to the Saudis should the United States take? The American right often attempts to imply that the only two choices in foreign policy are either to coddle dictators or to send in the army for regime change. There is no reason, however, that the United States cannot exercise steadfast, firm pressure behind the scenes for increased human rights, more open politics, and more effective steps against terrorism in Saudi Arabia. In the Gulf, where frankness is appropriate only in private, humiliating criticisms of the kingdom by U.S. officials, or the brandishing of implicit threats, will wreak more harm than good.

The Americans, however, would be wise to see their relationship with the kingdom as a two-way street. When the Saudi king warns the White House that an explosion will come if progress is not made toward a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, the warning should be taken seriously. When a Saudi ruler puts his enormous prestige on the line to advance a comprehensive peace plan, it should not be lightly tossed in the trash bin. When the Saudi establishment warns that American wars waged against regional powers might plunge the area into chaos, it should be listened to carefully.

With two-thirds of the world's proven petroleum reserves, the gulf is the cockpit of the global economy, and the Saudis are its pilots. King Abdullah is understandably worried about the Bush administration tossing grenades around in it.

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