Judith Miller's memoir

It's been four years since publication,so I'm late to the fair. I'm only now looking at Judith Miller's book, THE STORY (Simon & Schuster)-- chiefly a memoir of her years with The New York Times. That covers a lot of years. The Times hired her in 1977, and she was forced out in 2005.

In all the controversy about the supposedly hidden "weapons of mass destruction" in Saddam Hussein's hands in the run up to the Iraq War, Miller is for me the most fascinating single character. I am happy to report that the book doesn't make her seem less so.

A terminological point: she doesn't use the phrases "first Gulf War" and "second Gulf War." She refers to the war of 1990-91 as the Gulf War -- there is only one -- and the war of 2003 as the Iraq War.

Today, I'll quote a bit of what she wrote about the Gulf War, the war associated with George H.W. Bush, portrayed above. The Times' coverage was coordinated by Johnny Apple, and she wasn't part of that team. She was in Saudi Arabia, and she covered how the war affected that country and its politics. This proved interesting.

It appeared that King Fahd would be forced to make a choice: open Saudi society to western influence, or crack down on such opening as had occurred? But he chose to do both, "striking a balance between liberals and conservatives." By "liberals" here she means technocrats, the sort of person for whom openness to the west means first openness to various sorts of technical expertise, second openness to the idea of greater public participation in or at least greater transparency of government than traditional monarchies favor and thirdly, if only as a corollary, openness to the cultural baggage that comes with it. To satisfy these young technocrats, Miller writes, "the King created a majlis al shura, or consultative council, a baby step toward greater public participation and accountability, but hugely important in a country that had tolerated neither. Many Saudis still credit the Gulf War with having introduced 'modern' politics to the Kingdom."

On the other hand, Fahd worked to placate "the politically indispensable religious establishment, increasing the budget of their virtue police, the mutawa, who did things like hectoring women on the streets who weren't adequately covered up."

Fahd's opening to the traditionally pious also involved being at least polite to a young man named Osama bin Laden, who was wandering the corridors of power in the months before and during this war "with maps and flowcharts to demonstrate how the Kingdom could defend itself without infidel forces." This was the capacity in which Miller first encountered bin Laden. Her sources appear to have been on the westernizing side of the divide the King was straddling, and they saw bin Laden as at least mildly amusing.

"The Saudi prince who told me about young bin Laden's meetings had mocked his presentations."

In this whole passage, Miller paints an intriguing picture.

I expect to say something more about this book next week and, perhaps, again the week after that.

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Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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