An American mother’s dispute with Saudi Arabia points up the difficulty of partnering with a backward dictatorship. Pat Roush’s divorced Saudi husband kidnapped their daughters 16 years ago. She has been campaigning ever since to get them back. But U.S. authorities defer to the Saudis, and Saudi Arabia regards women and children as the property of the men who are their husbands and fathers.

Other problems with the Saudis loom more important, of course. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers last September were Saudi citizens. And their government continues to honor as “martyrs” the Arab suicide bombers in Israel and reward their families, as well as running the madrassahs, Islamic religious schools, many of which are spread across the Arab world teaching radical hatred of America and Americans.

American officials, concerned with maintaining friendly relations with Saudi Arabia, to say nothing of keeping a steady flow of oil, have for years brushed aside Pat Roush’s pleas as a mere annoyance. But Sept. 11 seems to have brought her problem to the fore, and Saudi Arabia’s current public relations campaign to buff its public image makes this a good time to press for justice.

Ms. Roush has been featured in magazine articles and television shows. She has a book contract and plans to tell her story in detail. The Wall Street Journal has taken up her case, and its chief editorial writer, William McGurn, recounted the details last week. She had met her Saudi husband, Khalid al-Gheshayan, as a student in California. Mr. McGurn reported that “his record during his years in America showed several arrests and a hospital diagnosis of alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia.” She obtained a divorce and custody of their two daughters. He returned to Saudi Arabia but she let him see the girls when he visited America.

On one such visit, when Alia was 7 and Aisha was 3, he took off with them. Twice, friendly American officials came close to pressuring Mr. al-Gheshayan to let the girls go home to their mother, but each time the State Department’s insistence on “impartiality” won out and the deal collapsed.

Chairman Dan Burton of the House Government Reform Committee listened to Ms. Roush and other witnesses at a hearing last week. They have evidence of 46 American citizens held against their will in Saudi Arabia. He and his committee drafted a bipartisan letter to President Bush, asking him to express interest in these innocent Americans. Their hope was that Mr. Bush would raise the matter at his meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal.

Reports of that meeting suggest that the two men steered clear of any such controversial matters as Americans who are virtual prisoners in Saudi Arabia, as well as those 15 Saudi hijackers and the madrassahs that continue to produce still more terrorists. Buttering up the Saudis is an old story, and once again American’s rights take second place to cruel Saudi customs.