ARE THE SAUDIS PUTTING ANOTHER ONE OVER ON US?

The Saudi Arabian government has created 5,000 four-year college scholarships with full living expenses for young Arabs who will come to the USA and study in American universities.

The whole idea is to improve relations between young Saudi men and the United States, things having gone to pot since 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers turned out to be Saudi men.

But is this really a good idea?

Will forcing youthful Saudi males to study with, live with and rub elbows with young Americans really improve relations between the two countries?

Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that just the opposite is likely to occur.

For decades, the Saudis have been busily promoting an extreme form of Islam called Wahabi, which calls all other faiths heretical and advocates violence against both Israel and America. Rich Saudi princes have been funding Wahabi Imams who come to America to push moderate Imams out of their mosques. The Wahabi Imams then try to convert their flocks into violent anti-Americanism. Are we really sure that these young scholarship Saudis are not Wahabis, bent on further radicalizing American Muslims?

The theory that Americans are wonderfully lovable people who can make friends with Arabs has been totally destroyed by surveys conducted in the Arab nations since the invasion of Iraq. It is hard to find an Arab country in which 10 percent of the people think well of Americans. Even in Turkey, a long-time ally, about 70 percent of its people think we're hogwarts.

American tourists have been traveling all over the world for sixty years, mixing with people of all cultures, including Muslims. What image has been produced about America from all this touring?

Americans are seen as rich, loud-mouthed ignoramuses who run around wearing bright, plaid shorts. We are the only people in the world intellectually incapable of speaking more than one language. And when a Paris cabbie who speaks Farsi, French and Spanish can't understand us, we tend to shout louder and louder in English, as if loudness equals understanding. What kind of image do angrily shouting tourists create for America?

Even back in World War II, when we were busily saving Britain from Hitler, the English had their own pet expression for American soldiers: "Americans are overpaid, over-sexed and over here." If Christian allies don't find us lovable, how do we expect to win over Muslims who consider us "the Great Satan”?

George Friedman, CEO of the world's largest private intelligence agency, addressed the subject in an speech to the Naples Council on World Affairs. He said, "Don't think you are going to make friends in the Middle East by getting close to the people there. To Arabs, Americans are a thoroughly hateful and detestable people." This statement has a great deal of validity when you consider that Mr. Friedman's "Stratfor" is generally years ahead of the CIA in gathering accurate Middle East intelligence.

Mr. Friedman's observation has been validated by a recent survey conducted among Arab students who had studied at American and European universities. The Arab students who had studied in Europe ended up thinking more highly of America than those who had studied at American universities. The results weren't even close.

Even when Americans behave perfectly, we irritate the average Arab male right down to the depths of his soul. He hates us because he envies our accomplishments and our power. He hates us because we symbolize the West, which has left the world of Islam trailing in the dust of history for the past four centuries. As you know, it is impossible to make friends with someone consumed by the "green-eyed monster."

If the over-rich Saudi government really wanted to improve relations with America, it would send all those young scholarship students to study at the Sarbonne. Maybe Eaton. Lucerne is nice in the summer.

But never Harvard. There are too many bright Chinese-American female students there.

If Saudi pride is so easily pricked by the accomplishments of American men, how do you think they would feel when out-classed by a rising flock of mere "Chinawomen”?

The proud, male, Arab culture would find the experience hateful.