Fresh Start Needs One More Element: Sobriety About the Saudi Serpent

Submitted by Joe (United States), Oct 17, 2007 at 20:16

Pipes is right to contrast the Bush 'War on Terror' mantra and policies to Rudy's 'Terrorists' War on Us' mantra. One comes from a governing class that was unprepared for 9.11, i.e. the Bush team. And one comes from a somewhat more enlightened American governing class represented by Rudy, Romney and others that lived through 9.11 and have come up the learning curve on what the next phase of conflict may entail.

But there has to be one more element to win, and that element is to separate ourselves from the Bush policy vis-a-vis the Saudis. I would argue that the Bush team's entire conduct of the war on terror has been designed to be 'Saudi compatible', to use a term from the software industry. From the 'religion of peace' nonsense, to the embrace of Wahabi mosques in the US, we have been bending over backwards to accomodate the Saudi serpent.

The most aggregious indication of this fear of alienating the Saudis, for my money, has been our failure to mobilize the American people to win the 'war on terror', including weak Army recruiting advertising that does not resonate with Anti-Jihadist patriotism, our refusal to engage in profiling at airports in order to avoid lawsuits, our tolerance of hate speech at American mosques, and the open borders debacle and the Bush labeling of the Minutemen as 'vigilantes', etc.

But Pipes alone can not point out the differences between Bush 1.0 and Rudy 2.0. Rudy himself has to begin systematically distancing himself from failed aspects of the Bush policy, and he can begin doing that by re-defining our relationship to the Saudis. If Hillary Clinton is the first to begin to step on the head of the Saudi serpent, she will win big.

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