Wahhabi Arabia

Reading America’s Kingdom, by Robert Vitalis, about “mythmaking on the Saudi oil frontier” and the devil’s bargain of oil for security that still binds us in a death grip with the carbon fountain of Arabia. And man, is the gang is all here: ARAMCO, Stardard Oil’s nasty spawn (nowdays known as Exxon/Mobile), Bechtel, innumerable al Sauds and al Fahds, Daddy bin Laden, the WWII-gut-punched Brits being cut out of the Middle East as the upstart Yanks take over. And bring along their Jim Crow notions…. Vitalis tracks the oligarchy’s move from mineral frontier in our SW to Latin America to the Persian Gulf, bringing with them their poisons of apartheid and union-phobia. An ugly, ugly story of modern imperialism in the century when the old version of imperialism was being put into its deserved grave.

One suggestive nugget: the “Arabist” St. John Philby called it “Wahhabi Arabia.” Got that right! This was of course Kim Philby’s father; according to WikiP, Kim was at one point spying on his dad for MI6. Another theory has it that he was first recruited by the Soviets to spy on the old man, since the old man was so tight with the Saudis and up to his gills in the tar patch of the American and British struggle to get the oil. Would have loved to sit around that dinner table!