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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (7646)	10/26/2001 10:42:50 AM
From: Jill	Respond to of 281500

I agree. He'd be a good president too. He presents strength, a quiet strength, a sense of the issues that is informed and wide-ranging, and yes, a human quality. He has real greatness. And I was proud of my country, watching that--for the open dialogue (one of the senators was actually an a-hole, I remember being astonished at the drek coming out of his mouth, and Powell looked pissed off but basically ignored it all, in gentlemanly fashion)--for the right to ask any questions, and for the fact that an elderly conservative senator (the one who complimented him) could say to a black man, I feel cosmically reassured you're the guy doing this. Those are the qualities that make America great. Of course, that open-ness has led to the porousness that allowed the terrorists to penetrate our culture. And of course, our greatness has meant we've been provincial and slow to admit our own imperialism and our own culpability, and we've let the world come to us (how many Americans are multilingual? Very few, as compared to most foreigners). But anyway--it was a wonderful session.

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (7646)	10/26/2001 12:42:15 PM
From: Sultan	Respond to of 281500

How Saudis became extremism's exporters Dogmatic Wahabis stirred up trouble so the government sent them east Isabel Vincent National Post The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States have focused the world's attention on Afghanistan, but the Islamist extremism that spawned the violence is not an Afghan phenomenon. It's an import from Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.'s most important allies in the Persian Gulf. For years, the world's largest producer of petroleum has also been one of the world's most important exporters of Islamist extremism. It has provided both the financial backing and the extremist ideology that has fuelled the growth of Islamist terrorist groups in central Asia. Today, Saudi Islamists have also gained such a powerful foothold in Saudi Arabia that they are threatening to destabilize the government. After weeks of investigation, FBI officials confirmed on Wednesday that 15 of the 19 hijackers suspected of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks, is a native of Saudi Arabia and has long been a conduit for secret funds from members of the Saudi royal family to various Islamist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan. But bin Laden is merely the most visible aspect of a far deeper connection: The Taliban, the extremist ruling regime in Afghanistan that harbours bin Laden, is in fact largely a Saudi creation. Members of the royal family armed and financed the Taliban's rise in the 1990s and, until recently, were among its strongest allies in the Arab world. "The Saudis have a great deal to answer for," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. "They are the main backers of the Taliban and tried to expand Sunni Islam around the world by promoting narrow-minded groups." nationalpost.com