MER - 5/2/97. On this date in Washington the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial is being dedicated. Surprisingly, all the former President's have managed to avoid being present. In this age of big-bucks and TV endorsements, there's not much gain it seems in remembering the past.
It's not likely the name Ibn Saud will be mentioned today. It's not likely there will be pictures of his goats and tents atop the U.S. war ship where he and the waining FDR met. But the legacy of that early American-Saudi alliance more than fifty years ago remains very much evident in today's Middle East. For during the five decades since the Saudis have become the premier American "client-regime".
Saudi Arabia is today in fact essentially an American protectorate. The American- Saudi-instigated War that all-but-destoryed Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War that plunged Iraq into submission in 1991, in important ways descended from the steps taken by the U.S. -- under FDR and Truman -- during and immediately after World War II.
After World War I, the European powers carved up and dominated the post-Ottoman Middle East creating the artificial boundaries, divided loyalties, and "client-regimes" that still today define the region and account for so much of its misery and despair. Here is the origin of the Kuwait-Iraq divide as well; a little British side agreement to carve out a little private enclave for themselves at the tip of the Persian Gulf. Here also -- with the "Balfour Declaration", and the Palestine "Mandate" -- lie the origin of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio which has plaqued the region ever since. Indeed, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 witnessed the origins of the very phrase "The Peace To End All Peace."
After World War II, the Americans began to take over the Middle East region, pushing the destroyed European powers out the way and taking over the prior commitments to the various "client regimes".
Today's phase of history all began with today's monument recipient, Franklin Roosevelt.
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