Thursday, September 18

The Dissident looks pretty interesting. I hope it lasts awhile. Via Nick Gillespie, who links to an article by Will Wilkinson. I also like The Real Roots of Islamic Extremism by Stephen Schwartz:
Those who argue that Islamist extremism is a product of American support for corrupt regimes have a point. But they overlook the main source of ideology, incitement, and funds for Islamist terror: the government of Saudi Arabia. The rulers of the Saudi kingdom now try to confuse Western opinion by proclaiming that they, too, are targets of Osama bin Laden, to mask their own complicity in his financing and organization. In reality, Islamist terrorism is only in part a protest movement by Saudi subjects such as Osama bin Laden who are aggrieved at the monarchy�s alliance with the West. It is, in much greater part, a phenomenon directly controlled by the Saudi authorities.

....[T]he reactionary faction of the Saudi monarchy has financed terrorism and infiltration in Central Asia, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Balkans, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, the Philippines, Indonesia, and, finally, in the ultimate form of al-Qaida.

Yet Saudi Arabia has never been humiliated by the West. Rather, its rulers have been pampered, coddled, and bribed by the West....[T]o its own population, the Wahhabist regime preaches a toxic mixture of ferocious separatism, exclusionism, and violence directed against non-Wahhabi Muslims and non-Muslims. Its dependence on American aid has led gullible policy experts in the West to view the Wahhabi faction around King Fahd and princes Sultan and Nayef as allies, and to stigmatize all opponents of the regime as extremists.

Far from being extremists, however, dissident Muslims under Saudi rule generally call for religious liberty � to accommodate Arab Christians now underground, the many thousands of Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist guest workers in the kingdom, and foreign Christian and Jewish visitors.
So the roots of terrorism may be Saudi, but it's the Americans who have lavished care on them to make them grow.

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