tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post2191687465473108019..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: How to Fight TerrorismStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-47723460941755248242016-07-19T05:24:34.511-07:002016-07-19T05:24:34.511-07:00Saudi Arabia is given a free pass because it has t...Saudi Arabia is given a free pass because it has the oil, and we need a world with oil and oil sold in U.S. dollars.<br /><br />http://www.salon.com/2016/01/06/saudi_arabia_funds_and_exports_islamic_extremism_the_truth_behind_the_toxic_u_s_relationship_with_the_theocratic_nation/<br />----<br />Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.” So advised world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited thinkers in human history.<br /><br />The counsel may sound simple and intuitive — that’s because it is. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. ignores it.<br /><br />Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. It is also a close U.S. ally. This contradiction, although responsible for a lot of human suffering, is frequently ignored. Yet it recently plunged back into the limelight with the Saudi monarchy’s largest mass execution in decades.<br />...<br />Saudi Arabia is a theocratic absolute monarchy that governs based on an extreme interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law). It is so extreme, it has been widely compared to ISIS. Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud characterized Saudi Arabia in an op-ed in The New York Times as “an ISIS that has made it.”<br /><br />“Black Daesh, white Daesh,” Daoud wrote, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia.”<br /><br />“In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other,” Daoud continued. “This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.”<br /><br />“In order to stop ISIS, you must first dry up this ideology at the source. Otherwise you are cutting the grass, but leaving the roots. You have to take out the roots,” he added.<br /><br />In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, scholar Yousaf Butt stressed that “the fountainhead of Islamic extremism that promotes and legitimizes such violence lies with the fanatical ‘Wahhabi’ strain of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia.”<br /><br />“If the world wants to tamp down and eliminate such violent extremism, it must confront this primary host and facilitator,” Butt warned.<br /><br />In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has spent an estimated $100 billion exporting its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide. It infuses its fundamentalist ideology in the ostensible charity work it performs, often targeting poor Muslim communities in countries like Pakistan or places like refugee camps, where uneducated, indigent, oppressed people are more susceptible to it.<br /><br />Whether elements within Saudi Arabia support ISIS is contested. Even if Saudi Arabia does not directly support or fund ISIS, however, Saudi Arabia gives legitimacy to the extremist ideology ISIS preaches.<br />...<br />Of the 19 Sept. 11 attackers, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia. Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 plotter, confessed in sworn testimony to U.S. authorities that members of the Saudi royal family funded al-Qaeda before the attacks. The Saudi government strongly denies this.<br />...<br />If it is truly interested in stopping terrorism, then, the U.S. and the rest of the West will heed Chomsky’s advice. The U.S. will realize that there really is an easy way to stop terrorism: It will stop participating in it, and end its alliance with Saudi Arabia.<br />---Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-59320507629080755812016-07-19T05:14:52.580-07:002016-07-19T05:14:52.580-07:00Stuart; What should our policy goal be? We need to...Stuart; What should our policy goal be? We need to increase the cost of terrorism. We need to inflict some serious punishment on the sponsors of terrorism. And that is not just al Qaeda and ISIS. It sounds strange to say so, but we cannot continue to make deals and negotiate with the leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, without telling the world that terrorism pays. <br /><br />I wonder who is a greater sponsor of terrorism, Iran or Saudi Arabia?<br /><br />It also might be a good idea for the U.S. to stop selling our weapons to the middle east. Someone might start to think we're the sponsors of the terrorism.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-21320173052654349642016-07-18T15:20:24.933-07:002016-07-18T15:20:24.933-07:00"against Israel?"
PM Begin was pretty c..."against Israel?"<br /><br />PM Begin was pretty clear when he claimed he "is the original terrorist." <br />The best "in the world."<br /><br />Or were you unaware Israel houses the first, the original, and likely the best terrorists in the world?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-26683652362962958892016-07-18T10:33:51.900-07:002016-07-18T10:33:51.900-07:00http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/14/ho...http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/14/how-samuel-huntington-predicted-our-political-moment/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com