Washington Watch Articles From 2005
SAUDI ARABIA UNDER ATTACK
Saudi Arabia is under attack again, with critics going to new lengths to not only portray the Kingdom as hostile to the US, but to smear any groups and individuals who have even remote connections with Saudis.
KING FAHD AND SAUDI FRIENDSHIP WITH THE UNITED STATES
The first of my many visits to Saudi Arabia was in 1981. Therefore, for most of the time that I have known the Kingdom and its people, Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was king and a friend of the United States.
THE DIFFERENCE
There are important differences between the Arab and broader Muslim immigrant experience in Europe and that of the Arab American and American Muslim communities in the United States.
BUSH: FIGHTING THE IRAQ WAR AT HOME
This war was supposed to have gone so differently. By now it is clear that the infantile fantasy of its architects (“shock and awe,” “a cake walk,” “flowers at our feet,” “six months and out,” and “the spreading of democracy throughout the Middle East”) did not pan out.
RAFIQ HARIRI: VISIONARY FOR LEBANON
Rafiq Hariri was larger than life. He was a political giant and a visionary whose accomplishments reflected both qualities—they were enormous in size and far-reaching in consequence.
GOOD NEWS IN SAUDI ARABIA AND LEBANON
Significant changes are taking place in public opinion in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Despite regional and domestic concerns specific to their countries, Saudis and Lebanese are more optimistic about their futures, more satisfied with their present circumstances, more focused on specific problems that must be solved, and more strongly identified with their countries than when we last polled in 2002.