reading Gatsby in Washington

Because we’re so focused on the terrible situation in Iraq, the foreigner everyone loves to hate today is Ahmed Chalabi, who graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine recently.

However belatedly, David Ignatius lowers the boom on a much more important Middle Eastern player: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005 and one of the most dangerous operators and obfuscators that the Beltway has ever known (emphasis mine).

He was the Gatsby of foreign affairs: entertaining Washington’s elite at his mansion overlooking the Potomac; exchanging secret favors with a string of presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush; lobbying for Saudi weapons purchases so effectively that he trounced even AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group; operating as a deniable arm of the CIA in covert operations around the world. …

Bandar’s brash style was so mesmerizing that it could lead observers to forget the fundamentals. He was so American, with his big cigars and his hard-partying ways, that he made Americans think that Saudi Arabia must be as modern and cosmopolitan as Bandar himself. In his embrace, presidents allowed themselves to forget that he represented a secretive, repressive Muslim kingdom that survived because it had made a pact with puritanical Wahhabi clerics who despised America. That was the problem with Bandar’s glittering role here: As with the fictional Gatsby, the lavish parties and the intrigue disguised a darker reality. That hidden truth finally became apparent when al-Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into buildings that symbolized America, and it turned out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Back in August 2002, in the run-up to the war in Iraq (when he was allowed to hold and publish independent opinions) and before he became the titular head of a news operation that regularly—and gleefully and casually—disgraces itself with its breaches of national security, Bill Keller wrote an op-ed called “The Loyal Opposition” in which he mentioned, in passing, that some “Republican foreign-policy luminaries” who were skeptics of the idea of war against Saddam

spend much of their time courting well-paying clients who would rather not rock boats in the Middle East.

Who knows what role Bandar played in all this. As Clive Davis suggests, we may have to wait a long time to find out.

All that socialising, all those guests: perhaps one day a novelist will give us the full story. I don’t imagine a member of the gilded elite will want to own up to what really went on.

Me, I think Bandar and the Saudis warrant a congressional investigation. But I’d read the novel, too.