Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror?

 
During the United States Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary meetings on November 8th (postponed from October 25th), a spokesman from Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) gave testimony in defense of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in terrorist activities around the world.

Upon reading his remarks, one wants to ask if there is some Middle East aphorism about the need to take refuge from sandstorms blowing dirt in the eyes? If so, this saying certainly applies to Mr. Cordeman’s bloviations to this Committee.

Saudia Arabia is being picked on, according to the expert from CSIS:

It is both dangerous and misleading to single out Saudi Arabia. We need to remember that 9/11 was the exception and not the rule. Most of the prior attacks and attempted attacks on the US were by North Africans, Egyptians, and Arabs from the Levant. Long before we confronted Islamic extremism and a "war on terrorism," nations like Egypt and Algeria were fighting major extremist movements, and a different kind of Islamic extremism had come to dominate Iran. No country in the Middle East or Islamic world is free of this threat, and every moderate regime is under attack. This is a clash within a civilization at which we are on the margin.

Since we need to start somewhere, “singling out” Saudi Arabia is as good a beginning as anyplace else. It certainly has created more than its share of trouble. Nowhere in his testimony does this man mention the millions of dollars dumped into the United States by the Saudi government in an attempt to undermine us from within. On the margin, indeed. This may be a “clash within a civilization” but there is no way for others — like us — to stay out, considering the way we are attacked repeatedly. A “clash within” does not include flying airplanes into infidel buildings.

Mr. Cordeman fails to mention the Saudi funding of American mosques or the staffing of them with incendiary imams. Nor does he say anything about the widely disseminated “educational” materials for children which portray Israel as the embodiment of evil and the singular problem in the Middle East turmoil. Nowhere does he talk about the Saudi funding of chaplains in American prisons who preach Wahhabi fundamentalism and convert marginal people into a religion which seeks ultimately, the dhimmification of our country.

Mr. Cordeman makes an astonishing claim:

There is no single cause for Islamist extremism, and no easy correlation between any given set of the region's problems and support for violence and terrorism.

Au contraire, sir. The single cause is the prevalent Islamic belief, manifested in the particular by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, that they have been denied the cutural and political and religious dominance in world affairs that is Islam’s rightful inheritance. Islam believes in two worlds: Dar-al-Harb and Dar-al-Islam. It is a Manichean point of view, and one that is not conducive to negotiation, compromise or shades of meaning. “Dhimmi or die” pretty well sums it up.

Saudi Arabia is at the root of much of the disorder in the world right now. If the Angel of History were to appear tonight and simply erase the Kingdom of Saud from the equation, things would change overnight. Would we suddenly experience world peace? By no means. But the engine of discord would have at least three fewer cylinders: deep-pocket funding for world-wide dissenion would decrease dramatically; terrorist invaders in Iraq would dry up; and the nasty mechanations between Syria and Saudi Arabia or between the Pakistani madrasses and Saudi Arabia would be no more. And think of all the Indonesian slaves currently in servitude there — they could all go home, taking a bit of the decadent treasure with them.

Meanwhile, we have to be on guard against a country that projects the blame for Middle Eastern problems on Israel. You have only to compare what Israel, with far less money than Saudi Arabia, made of its little patch of desert, and what Saudi Arabia, with all its billions of petrodollars has utterly failed to do for its citizenry or for the people it hires as slaves to tend to its bloated kingdom.

It is neither dangerous nor misleading to single out Saudi Arabia. In fact, it’s waaaay overdue. Let’s see what the Senate Judiciary Committee decides about the question it has posed.

Will it dare to call Saudi the foe that it really is? Will it conclude that without the Kingdom of Saud the Twin Towers would still be standing and we might not be in Iraq?


More on other Committee witnesses to follow.