Mamoun Fandy, Asharq Al-Awsat

WASHINGTON — Many in the Arab world claim that Zionist organizations, specifically AIPAC, have bought the American government. They argue that Zionists are in the driving seat, taking the empire down a road that will serve not America’s best interests, but those of Israel. This is an example of the disease of conspiracy theories among Arabs, and I have criticized it several times as reductive and inconsistent with the dynamics of American politics.

I had mistakenly believed that the conspiracy theory disease was restricted to writers in the Arab world. However, an examination of developments in America after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 shows that the disease has spread to the United States. Many extremist and Likud supporters in the US believe that the American government has been bought with Saudi money.

They think that all those working in the American government, for example in security agencies such as the CIA or the FBI, take money from Saudi princes and as a result are refusing to reveal “the truth” of what had happened on Sept. 11.

The matter doesn’t stop at security agencies. Some extremist writers in the US accuse certain senators and President George W. Bush’s family and friends of receiving bribes from Saudi Arabia.

These accusations have been the subject of recent books written by extremist Likud supporters in the US. One example of such books is Robert Baer’s “Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude.”

When I met Mr. Baer in the green room of the CNN building, where we were waiting to be interviewed on two different issues, I told him: “I don’t have a quarrel over the fact that you can accuse anyone of whatever you like. However, you do not have enough information to make these kinds of allegations.”

He replied: “It’s true that the book relied on old information and I was hoping to have the chance to update it, but the publisher was in a hurry.”

The question here is: What made the publisher rush things?

The same applies to another book published by Random House titled “Why America Slept” and reviewed in Time Magazine. Its author is America’s foremost conspiracy theorist, Gerald Posner.

Posner’s argument reads like a techno thriller: The book apparently is a continuation of the conspiratorial mind that we saw in his writings about the assassinations of President Kennedy and of Martin Luther King. Now he presents a new book for conspiracy enthusiasts. It claims that the American government, by covering up the Saudi-Pakistani relations with the Taleban and Al-Qaeda, is responsible for the Sept. 11 events. From Posner’s point of view, Saudi Arabia is responsible for controlling the American administration and for Sept. 11.

Extremists in the Arab world believe that the “the Jews” are responsible for Sept. 11, because “they told some other Jews” in the Twin Towers not to go to work on that fateful day.

Extremists in the US believe that the Saudi government knew of Sept. 11 in advance. Extremist in the Arab world see America as a country bought by Jews and extremists from the Jewish side see America being bought by Saudi money.

The question to be answered here is: Who has bought the American government? Is it the Zionists or the Saudis?

Is there any way out of this madness?

Those who read Time Magazine’s review of Posner’s book should worry that the American media is being infected with the disease of conspiracy theories.

However, hope remains because Time and other media outlets like it will refuse to adopt Posner’s theories about the leaking of information from senior officials on the investigations into Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qaeda member.

Nor did the magazine accept the allegation that the American administration applies torture to get information. Time introduced lawyer Posner as a person who sees conspiracies in everything. Posner may have developed this attitude owing to the days he spent at the University of Berkeley in California, which was the gathering place for drug aficionados as well as proponents of theories that agents of foreign countries control the American government.

“If Posner’s book had been presented to a Hollywood director to produce a film, he would have doubted the truthfulness of the scenario of the death of three Saudi princes — one after the other within a short span — and the death of a Pakistani security official after the US presented information to the Saudi government of Abu Zubaida’s confession accusing the Saudi princes.”

This is what I was told by a former Republican official. The problem according to him is: “How do you respond to a book such as this?” The information is leaked by unknown sources and all of the accused are dead. Which thread can we trace?

The best strategy to confront such imaginary accusations is to ignore them, because the public will reject them. This is what happened when the Americans read Posner’s books on “the conspiracies” behind the assassinations of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. This is also what intelligent Arabs did recently when conspiracy theories surfaced over the death of Suad Hosni.

Extremists will still believe in conspiracies, whether they are in the books of Posner or Baer or even that of the French author Terry Maison, who claimed that America is the one that planned the Sept. 11 attack.

In the end, it is the responsibility of intelligent people, in both the Arab world and the US, to isolate the extremists who have started to promote such fantasies that defy logic and put America and Arabs on a confrontation course. Both will be better off without them.

What is perhaps most curious about this matter is that those who promote such theories in the US and in the Arab world are very few in number.

As for the five Arabs, they are well known to everyone. The real problem is that they are now writing in respectable newspapers and magazines.

Surely marginalizing extremism and conspiracy theories should be the shared responsibility of everyone, in the West and the Arab world. But are we ready to rise to the challenge?

- Arab News Opinion 5 September 2003