The Saudis are talking nice in public again, leaving a lot of Americans wondering about the real face of Saudi Arabia.
Are they the good guys or the evildoers? I guess it's time we told them what it is that we want from our good friends, the Saudis.
If nothing else, we should make certain our friends know what we expect. So let me list them...
Believe it or not, I don't think oil is no. 1.
1. Quit the hate. Quit funding the schools that teach that huge number of Arab and Muslim youth to hate the West in general, America in particular.
The reason that comes before oil is because we have other oil suppliers. And the truth is, if we wanted to, we could either take or neutralize those Saudi oil fields anyway.
Another reason the hate issue is so important is that Mohammed Atta wannabes are going to be in our hair for the next 50 years or so. It's a little like scud missiles. One or two scuds is bad, but not unmanageable... thousands is something else.
Oil might be no. 2 on our list.
2. We don't want games. We want a simple recognition that oil is what makes the world go round. We enrich you in exchange for two things: the oil itself and the assurance that it won't be used as a threat to upset the world economy.
It's simple. We give you gold palaces, concubines, and jet planes equipped with former Air Force One pilots, and you give us oil. No B.S.
3. Don't lay the Palestinian thing on us entirely. You do your part.
Don't raise money for suicide bombers. Don't fund hate schools, as mentioned earlier. Do invest in Palestinian schools and businesses. Don't keep paying some Palestinian warlord to keep those poor afflicted people in bondage another 100 years.
4. Tell the truth.
Do the Palestinian people even know what Yasser Arafat turned down in the final days of the Clinton administration? Do they know he turned down their Palestinian state? I don't think so. He lies to them. That doesn't mean you should do it too.
5. We expect you to never come to our president with a laundry list of threats and ultimatums. We don't want to hear about that any more.
There's one last thing I would suggest to the Saudis: Next time 15 of your youth decide to hijack American airliners and crash them into buildings, why don't you stop them? Think you could manage that? After all, you do have the advantages of a police state.
That's My Word.
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