Obama can’t let oily royals extort us
The President of the United States needs to stand up now to a government in Saudi Arabia that somehow thinks it has the right to threaten this country over a bill that might hold the Saudis accountable for planes that flew into our buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, and murdered nearly 3,000 of our own. Because if you don’t stand up big now, if you don’t do that for the dead of Sept. 11, then when do you?
The Saudis threaten to sell off $750 billion in assets if Congress passes legislation that opens them up to possible lawsuits over the attack of Sept. 11. It is a high-stakes shakedown, nothing better and nothing more. If Barack Obama doesn’t call their bluff on this, then he gives in to that kind of shakedown, and looks as weak as his political opponents say he is. On an issue this important and this visceral, he doesn’t get to play law professor.
Mostly, the President needs to tell the Saudis that they don’t impose economic sanctions on us, that we impose sanctions like that on them. The alternative is explaining to those who lost family members and loved ones that they’re not even allowed their day in court, not even allowed the chance to prove that the Saudis might have financed the most terrible day in this city’s history.
If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of Sept. 11. He looks as if he is providing political cover for Saudi Arabia the way Sen. Bernie Sanders provides cover for gun manufacturers who want the U.S. government to continue to protect them from litigation, even when it comes from the extended family of Sandy Hook Elementary School.
It was just the other day that Gov. Andrew Cuomo was talking about Sanders siding with gun manufacturers on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that is like their own bulletproof vest. Cuomo said that Sanders had established a “political stance on a moral issue.” The President is doing the exact same thing with the Saudis. The bill against which President Obama is actively lobbying is sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat from this state, and Sen. John Cornyn, Republican from Texas, and would at least expose the Saudi government to liability in Sept. 11 lawsuits.
It is worth remembering that the 9/11 Commission only came to the rather vague conclusion in 2004 that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” as if junior officials wouldn’t have counted. No matter how many times you read the nuanced language of that sentence, the less it sounds like a conclusion and more it sounds like some kind of legal position. Just not for us. For them.
And of course there are still nearly 30 pages of the commission investigation into the attack on our buildings and our city that have never been released to the American public. Now, as the Saudis try to push this President around at the same time he pushes back against the legislation of Schumer and Cornyn, the President’s men float a theory, light as a kite, that somehow that legislation will put Americans and American businesses abroad at risk. But he seems as worried about the pile of money the Saudis might take off the table. It reminds you of the wisdom of the late Giants general manager, George Young, who once said, “When they say it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.”
But what price do you put on the loss of 3,000 of our own? If you don’t challenge
the Saudis to follow through on what will eventually turn out to be empty threats — we’re talking about a selloff that would do lasting damage to their own economy — then what price are you placing on this country’s honor? The justice sought by the family of Sept. 11 is no different than the justice sought by the family of Sandy Hook Elementary School.
If the President really is worried that weakening foreign immunity will weaken our own, then dare other countries to take that kind of political stance; dare them to use the worst attack on this country’s soil in its history as a legal precedent. Or a moral one.
This isn’t about resurrecting all the old conspiracy theories involving the Saudis and Sept. 11. No. This is about the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, apparently just one of those crazy coincidences you get in life sometimes.
It was one thing when Barack Obama did not show up in Paris on a Sunday afternoon after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and looked as if he had let the rest of the world down that day. This is about turning his back on the dead of Sept. 11 and their survivors, and letting his country down at the same time. He is like all the others who held his office before him, more desperate than ever in the late rounds to be remembered as a great President. Be one now.