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Daughters of America Saudi Arabia holds U.S. citizens hostage. Will President Bush demand their freedom? Thursday, June 13, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT Remember the fuss raised by Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister back in January about the U.S. detention of captured Saudi nationals in Guantanamo? "We'll demand that the Saudi detainees be handed over, because they are subject to the Kingdom's rules," Prince Naif told the Arab News back in January. At least the Saudi government speaks up for its (male) citizens. Chairman Dan Burton says his House Government Reform Committee has evidence of some 46 cases involving American citizens held against their will in Saudi Arabia. And his committee has just drafted a bipartisan letter to President Bush, urging him to express the same interest on behalf of these innocent Americans that the Saudi minister showed for his country's captured terrorists. (Even Mr. Burton's arch-foe, Henry Waxman, signed it!) Mr. Burton's letter, which he tells us he hopes to deliver personally, grows out of emotional hearings yesterday in which three American women related their horror stories about being caught between a hostile Saudi law and an ineffective and too often indifferent State Department. As William McGurn reported Tuesday, Pat Roush's two daughters, Alia and Aisha, were kidnapped from America in 1986. On Monday she learned that her Saudi ex-husband has married off Aisha in what she believes is retribution for her participation in these hearings. Dria Davis was luckier: At 13 she escaped from her abusive Saudi father, after getting no help from the U.S. embassy. But perhaps most searing was Monica Stowers's tearful account of having two U.S. Marine guards escort her out of the Riyadh embassy where she'd sought refuge with her children. "One of them apologized to me saying, 'Ma'am, I'm sorry but we're only doing our job.' " Miss Stowers delivered her testimony yesterday via videotape, because she refuses to leave Saudi Arabia so long as the Saudis won't let her daughter depart with her. Now, we sympathize with diplomats trying to uphold American law and interests in difficult parts of the world. That's their job. Unfortunately, the State Department has not yet recognized that when an American child is kidnapped, or when an American woman charged with no crime is held against her will, it's not just an affront to the individual. It's an affront to America. So when the U.S. instructs its ambassadors to "maintain impartiality," it sends a terrible signal to foreign nations. We also have to believe that U.S. Marines don't sign up for duty believing they'll be called upon to do the dirty work of removing desperate American mothers and children from the premises. Certainly the Saudis picked up on it. As a Saudi official sneered when Miss Stowers showed up on his doorstep, "Why don't you go to your government for help?" When asked about these cases during his briefing Tuesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher again referred to them as "civil matters" between individuals, not state-to-state issues. In the specific case of Pat Roush's daughters, he further argued that "at this point they're adults and they need to decide on their own." Our friends the Saudis must have had a good laugh at that one. Saudi law forbids women of any age from leaving their country without permission. Another way of stating those same facts would be to say that two adult U.S. citizens are trapped in a country where women are treated as the property of men, with no way of knowing what they really think. The only way to let these and other women "decide on their own" is to insist, as Mrs. Roush requests, that they be permitted to come to America and speak for themselves. For too long State has let the Saudis hide behind the pretense that they are handcuffed by a Saudi law that gives all rights to men, as if that feudal state were some kind of democracy. This tolerance for what amounts to kidnapping is one more example, like funding madrassa schools that teach the hatred of America, of the way the Saudis treat their supposed ally with contempt. The fact is that the Saudis could issue exit visas to these innocent Americans any time they wanted. With President Bush set to meet Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal today, we can't think of a better time to ask.