For the Bush administration, national security takes a back seat to corporate interests. Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), export terrorism with every barrel of oil they sell. Saudi and UAE militants have been waging war in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in Iraq, and in the Philippines. The Saudi and UAE royalty are officially opposed to terrorism, but they are reluctant to crack down on Islamic maximallists, including those who support terrorism, for fear of a conservative backlash within their own countries. Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia and the UAE indirectly provide aid to terrorists by legitimizing Jihad, and they provide direct aid in the form of funding. At the same time that they were doing business with American companies, and hosting US Military bases and Navy ports, the UAE was tolerating terrorists. As long as American companies are getting rich on the arrangements ($6.5 billion for Lockheed-Martin alone), the administration is willing to accept the lackadaisical Saudi and UAE opposition to terrorism.

In the late 1990s, the US was actively seeking the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden. The hunt was put on hold during the pre- 9/11 days of the Bush administration. However, the Clinton administration was just as duplicitous as the Bush administration. On more than one occasion, cruise missile attacks on Bin Laden were called off because Osama was in the company of UAE princes. The US wasn’t willing to take out Osama if it meant taking some UAE royalty with him. So, while Clinton was willing to accept the deaths of Osama’s wives and children as collateral damage, he wasn’t willing to accept the death of a UAE prince.

The CIA noted several occasions where UAE royalty went on hunting expeditions with Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The UAE clearly, if implicitly, supported Osama Bin Laden even as he was committing terrorist acts against the US. Then as now, our government is willing to look the other way when it comes to doing business with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

I’ve been surprised that I haven’t heard or read anything in the mainstream media linking Osama Bin Laden to the UAE, but the connection is very clear and has been well documented. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States made this connection explicit in a 2004 report (“US had bin Laden in its sights at least three times but balked: commission,” Agence France Presse, 24 March 2004). In Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, author Steve Coll makes interesting reading of the very complicated political history of Afghanistan. Arab Muslim militants played and continue to play a large role in that history. Officially, the UAE supports the US “war on terror,” unofficially UAE royalty, and therefore sectors of the UAE government, has proven itself an ally of Al Qaeda.

If America was serious about the war on terror, we would demand that Saudi Arabia and UAE do more to disrupt terrorist elements that foment within their borders, even if that means Americans pay for such antagonism at the pumps. As long as we allow big business—oil, the defense industry—to set the agenda, the war on terror will be half-hearted.