Saudi Arabia

How Wolf Blitzer just helped Al-Qaeda


By Bob Harris


(Note: nothing in the following should be considered as even slightly pro-bad-guys. Remember, Charlie Manson only got locked up after Vince Bugliosi got inside Charlie's brain. Understanding the bad guys is how you defeat them. Pretending you do, then attacking an entirely different enemy, while making up shit to justify it, is how you get your ass kicked.)


A few minutes ago on CNN they were blithering about an Al-Qaeda offshoot group's claim to Saudi police collaboration in the kidnapping and murder of Paul Johnson. The question was framed, and I quote: "Saudi Arabia -- ally or enemy?"


Um, kids...?


Saudi Arabia (members of whose Army Signal Corps I once trained, back when I first got out of college, before I had a freakin' clue) is a nasty dictatorship steeped in puritanical Wahhabism whose populace is as likely to support Al-Qaeda as oppose it, in large part because they've been bullied by a selfish regime tight with the West for as long as anyone can remember.


In short, what we're looking at may well be 1970s Iran, all over again.


But...


A big chunk of what Al-Qaeda wants -- and they've always been pretty damned up front about it -- is to get the West out of what they consider holy land. (That's not to justify a damned thing they do. But even bad guys have motives, and we need to understand them to fight intelligently.) More than that, once the former Saudi Arabia is in their hands, they intend to harness the region's oil resources to finance a greater war against the West.


Which puts the U.S. in an interesting position right now. Support the Saudis in a greater crackdown? Al-Qaeda probably gains in the long term. Withdraw support for the Saudis? Al-Qaeda probably gains in the short term.


Thanks a bunch, Mr. President. Thanks for not staying focused on Al-Qaeda full-on.


Did Saudi cops actually assist with the kidnapping? Hell if I know.


But would convincing America that they did -- and in turn, leading us to begin questioning our support for the Saudi government -- be absolutely perfect PR for Al-Qaeda right now? You betcha.


This is absolutely not the last time you're going to hear Al-Qaeda claim they have support within the Saudi police, military, or government.


So what do we do next? Good question. Actually using our leverage to help the Saudi citizenry gain the most basic of palpable rights -- like, say, um, voting -- as fast as possible might help defuse the situation. This stuff really isn't that hard, people. If you're a Saudi cab driver, and you're getting a better deal just by hanging out and doing your job, you're a lot less likely to sign on to blowing yourself to bits as a method of personal advancement.


Given that the only long-term options the House of Saud really have are a) reform or b) overthrow, it seems like a plan. The fact that Bush isn't openly pushing for it in Saudi Arabia tells you just how meaningless his rhetoric about democracy really is.


In any case, here's the point of this post: I sure as hell wish Wolf Blitzer (or any of these damned idiots) was capable of framing a debate in realistic, informed terms -- instead of the with-us-or-against-us stupidity of framing an entire country suddenly as "ally or enemy."


The way it's sounding, I'm afraid we're about to start hearing a lot about how 15 of the 19 WTC hijackers were actually Saudi -- almost 3 years too late.


We have one hell of a crappy ally in Saudi Arabia. Really, really super crappy. But mindless reporting like this -- submitting Saudi Arabia into a possible national enemy -- is playing directly into Al-Qaeda's hands.

CC here: An interesting post. Once again, the hope lies in a choice between the promotion of democracy or supporting an oppressive regime. Bush swore up and down that the old days were through and that we would no longer support cruel dictators to cover our interests. We then went on to support Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Khazakstan, etc. Al-Qaeda is not becoming more violent because they are lashing out at the thought of their extinction. The are lashing out because Bush's idiotic policies is helping them to recruit and grow. We need to change strategies if we're going to make progress against them. The best that way that I can think of to harm Al-Qaeda is to make people not want to join them. For that to happen, they have to have the choices in their lives that Bush & the regimes he supports are still unwilling to give them. It will only get worse until the person in charge of the Administrative branch of the government understands and acts on this.