ARABIAN KNIGHT
Ibn Saud arrived for his voyage to the Suez meeting in full regal splendor—flowing robes and headdress, a retinue of Bedouin bodyguards, a private physician, the royal astrologer, ceremonial coffee servers, cooks, porters, slaves, and a flock of forty sheep. Arrangements had been made for the king to sail north aboard the battleship USS Murphy. His initial entourage numbered more than 140 people, but the Murphy had room for only 47.
When American soldiers offered the king the commodore’s cabin, he refused. Accustomed to the vast Arabian desert, the king cringed at the idea of sleeping in a cramped, four-walled cabin. So Persian rugs were spread across the ship’s deck, a royal tent was pitched, and the king’s favorite armchair was placed at the bow next to a jury-rigged sheep pen. Saud had declined to eat the American meats aboard the ship since they had been preserved in a refrigerator—he didn’t trust the technology and thought it unsanitary to eat animals that had been dead for more than twenty-four hours. (The king did, however, try an apple pie à la mode and was so taken with it that he had American apple trees planted in Saudi soil upon his return.) He insisted on feeding a royal supper of freshly killed mutton to everybody aboard the ship, including the lowestranking American soldiers. At prayer times, the ship’s navigator would give the king the exact location of Mecca by compass; once the king had confirmed this reading with his astrologer, he would bow toward the holy city and lead his retinue in prayer.
When USS Murphy finally approached USS Quincy, with the dramatic spread of rugs, tents, and robed guests visible on its bow, Roosevelt kept marveling to his staff, “This is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating!” The president, who was a chain-smoker, quickly stabbed out a cigarette before welcoming the king onboard, as traditional Wahhabi principles prohibit tobacco smoking.
The meeting took place on Valentine’s Day. Wearing his customary cloak over his shoulders, the American president brought no entourage of his own, with the exception of a translator. Despite the clash of cultures, the two leaders became fast friends. King Saud offered Roosevelt complete Arabian wardrobes for his family. Roosevelt, whose legs had been paralyzed in his late thirties by a bout with polio, candidly discussed his ailment with the king, a similarly larger-than-life man who had a lame leg among other injuries from his earlier years in battle. At the end of the visit, FDR gave Saud a spontaneous gift—a state-of-the-art wheelchair, Western technology that had not yet made its way east. The president also offered his Arab ally a Douglas two-engine airplane and a supply of penicillin—more newfangled innovations that impressed the king.
William Eddy, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel who spoke Arabic and served as a translator during the meeting, described the rapport between the two leaders in his memoir: “The King and the President got along famously together. Among many passages of pleasant conversation I shall choose the King’s statement to the President that the two of them really were twins: (1) they were both of the same age…; (2) they were both heads of states with grave responsibilities to defend, protect and feed their people; (3) they were both at heart farmers…(4) they both bore in their bodies grave physical infirmities.” In the aftermath of the giftgiving, the king said, “This [wheel]chair is my most precious possession. It is the gift of my great and good friend, President Roosevelt, on whom Allah has had mercy.”
It was during the Quincy rendezvous, amid exotic meals, astrology readings, and high-tech gifts, that the leaders of the West and East established the foundations of a potent and high-stakes relationship: America would provide military support to keep the royal dynasty in power. King Ibn Saud would, in turn, continue to offer Americans privileged access to his kingdom’s oil.
The issue of oil was allegedly not the centerpiece of the discussion between Saud and Roosevelt. In the absence of a transcript, aides have recalled that Roosevelt primarily stressed the urgent matter—following on the Holocaust—of resettling European Jews in Palestine. He asked for the king’s support in this effort, but Saud retorted that Arabs should not have to redress the sins of Adolf Hitler, and made a remark that has since proven ominously prescient: “Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their land to Jews.”
Even though the two leaders could not find agreement on the question of Zionism, Ibn Saud made a formal request for FDR’s friendship and support. This was the kind of simple and direct question often used to seal alliances between tribal leaders. Saud said that he especially prized America’s friendship because the United States was the only global power that had never made any attempt to colonize or enslave another country—it was, instead, a champion of freedom. The king said he valued nothing more than Saudi Arabia’s independence. He had cited a similar reasoning when, just before the war, the negotiations that granted Socal exclusive oil rights had concluded. Though Socal paid a stiff price, Saud claimed he could have gotten far more from British and Japanese prospectors yearning for the bid. “Gentlemen, the Japanese offered me twice as much for one-third of what you now obtain!” he’d told the American entrepreneurs, adding that no amount of money was more important to him than the assurance that his American partners would not interfere in his domestic affairs.
FDR accepted Ibn Saud’s request for friendship, and vowed that under his leadership, the United States “would never do anything which might prove hostile to the Arabs.” This was one of Roosevelt’s final acts as president—he died of a brain hemorrhage six weeks after the encounter.
Roosevelt’s promise would be reaffirmed again and again to the Saudi royal family by subsequent American presidents. In 1950, President Harry Truman wrote to Ibn Saud: “I wish to renew to Your Majesty the assurances which have been made to you several times in the past, that the United States is interested in the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia. No threat to your Kingdom could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States.”
No other scene in modern history intrigues me more than the meeting between Roosevelt and Ibn Saud. All the presidential administrations that have followed Roosevelt’s—including the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan administrations—sought to build on this precedent and further cement U.S. relations with the Saudis. They worked to ensure that the oil so crucial to our domestic prosperity and military victories would flow freely from the region’s wells.
The George H. W. Bush administration cited the Roosevelt–Ibn Saud meeting as part of its rationale for launching Operation Desert Storm. “We do, of course, have historic ties to the governments in the region,” said Dick Cheney, then defense secretary—ties that “hark back with respect to Saudi Arabia to 1945, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy…and affirmed at that time that the United States had a lasting and a continuing interest in the security of the Kingdom.” The security of the kingdom, after all, had become tantamount to the security of the increasingly oil-dependent United States.
Twelve years later, Cheney would again voice his intention to protect Saudi security as he made his argument for invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. At a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in August 2002, Cheney said that with access to weapons of mass destruction, Saddam “could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, [and] directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region.”
LIFELINE
The urgent memo sent by Major General Richard Zilmer from the fields of Fallujah in 2006 was not, in fact, the first document addressing concerns inside the Pentagon about the military’s dependence on fossil fuels. I was surprised when a quick online search led me to a 130-page report prepared by the Defense Science Board (DSB), the military’s most prestigious technical advisory committee. This 2001 document, titled More Capable Warfighting Through Reduced Fuel Burden, made detailed recommendations for ramping up the fuel efficiency of military equipment, facilities, and overall strategy. The report exposed Department of Defense (DoD) negligence on this issue: “Although significant warfighting, logistics and cost benefits occur when weapons systems are made more fuel-efficient, these benefits are not valued or emphasized in the DoD requirements and acquisition