Saudi Arabia and the Terrorist Threats

The United States' war on terrorism has seen some impressive victories since the horrific attacks two Septembers ago. The removal of the terrorist coddling Taliban regime in Afghanistan was a strong blow to Al Qaeda's training camps and ability to project worldwide terror. Also, the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, which admittedly supplied funds to terrorist organizations, was a major boost to removing serious funding and support for terrorism. But has the United States truly made significant progress in razing the world's ability to project terror against Americans? Some proponents claim that there are much more important, terrifying threats brewing to attack the United States. Author Alex Alexiev states, "Murderous as it is, al-Qaeda is a symptom, not the cause, of the terrorist phenomenon". So then, what other phenomena are the causes for underpinning America's war on terrorism? "Our problem is a dangerous and widespread malignancy, a kind of Islamic fascism, which has metastasized throughout the international Muslim community. While it uses an interpretation of Islam as its ideological banner, Islamic fascism is much closer to Nazism and Communism in its essence than to traditional Islam," The epitome of this analysis rests in one of our greatest 'allies' in the Middle East. Many neo-cons in Washington are claiming that the strong fundamentalist movement in Saudi Arabia is actually the most important target in the war on terrorism. Extremist Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia threatens to transform Islam into a fanatical machine, bent on destroying infidels who refuse their blend of ideology. The House of Saud accepts, or at least tolerates, this ideology to be the official religious creed in Saudi Arabia. So one of the United States' better allies condones, and some would argue encourages, the type of ideology that threatens their war on terrorism more than practically any other threat. Can these two seemingly incompatible goals be sustained? Much has been made of Saudi Arabia's leisurely pursuit of terrorists, even after September 11th. Although there has been a more dramatic campaign against terrorists since the Riyadh bombing earlier this year, one has to wonder how serious these actions are and if their true intentions are the capturing of people who either follow or are sympathetic to the fanatical, extremist form of Islam that Saudi Arabia promotes. Still others contemplate the impropriety that the Saudis and Wahhabism are really the threat that some are proposing and may fulfill the prophecy of the 'clash of civilizations' or the war on Islam. "Saudi religious practices and institutions were not problems when the Carter and Reagan administrations were promoting jihad against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan . . . [S]ince it [jihad by thousands of Mujahadeens] dovetails with myriad anti-imperialistic forces in the region and world, 'Wahhabism' has become a major concern. This is where the so-called 'War on Terrorism' really does threaten to become a war on Islam," author Gary Leupp proclaims. At the very least, an investigation of what threats are emerging from Saudi Arabia and the followers of their extremist creed, their support for terrorist activities and what are the feasible policy options the United States can employ to produce the most productive outcome.