By Terrell E. Arnold, 6-20-4

After a week of cliff-hanging uncertainty in which we waited with growing fear of the outcome, the self-labeled al Qaida terrorists in Saudi Arabia took the life of Paul Johnson. It was done in a crude show of the absolute power a small group of determined insurgents can wield over a defenseless individual. Acts of terrorism have escalated in our time toward this level of inhuman brutality.............

This was the second brutal murder of a hostage in the past two months and the fourth since US forces went into Afghanistan to search, unsuccessfully it proved, for al Qaida founder Osama bin Laden. One can surely say in anger, as did the father of Nicholas Berg, "My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. But Paul Johnson happened to be an American in Saudi Arabia, and an asset to that country at a time when Saudi political stability may be coming apart. He was caught in the crossfire. His death raises serious questions about the struggles for power that unsettle Saudi Arabia as well as other Middle East countries and about America,s role in them.

A number of writers on Middle East affairs have attempted to depict the political struggles of this region as part of a "clash of civilizations, a clash between western modernism and traditional, fundamentalist Islam. Such a label is basically a cheap shot that overplays the intrinsic merits of western values while belittling the significance of Islamic cultures and the concerns of their peoples. But the most serious effect of the cheap shot is that it keeps us from any real understanding of what happened to Paul Johnson as well as what can happen to other Americans if things go on as they have.

Paul Johnson died because he was seen by his captors as a symbol of the role the United States has played for close to three generations in sustaining an undemocratic and repressive regime. It is ironic that a country with the world,s largest exportable oil reserves sold its products to the world,s most powerful democracy, but used the proceeds with our implicit blessings to maintain a small and powerful oligarchy. The unwillingness of that oligarchy to change, to respond to the needs, desires and convictions of its large and poor masses, coupled with the insensitivity of the United States to those feelings, is the reason Paul Johnson died.

It is an error of fact to simply blame his death on al Qaida, as both Saudi and American officials now are doing. Following that scenario, Saudi officials reported today that they have killed Saudi al Qaida leader, Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin, as well as three members of his group. They were the named perpetrators of Johnson,s death. If American and other officials and the public accept this report as final, then the Saudis certainly will do the same. But the larger truth is that Saudi princes will go on ruling the country and refusing to accommodate the wishes of the people. That will continue to feed the frustrations of the country,s poor and unrepresented masses. Some will become terrorists. Other innocent people will be victims. Our country will be blamed. Paul Johnson will have died in vain.

The writer is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State. He will welcome comments at

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