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Saudi Arabia's Religious Hatred
(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - The State Department's addition last week of Saudi Arabia to its list of the world's most religiously intolerant nations was a step long overdue. For years, the Saudi regime was exempt from harsh criticism in official U.S. circles - an immunity bought with the hundreds of millions of dollars Riyadh lavished on U.S. policymakers, ambassadors, and lobbyists. But that changed after 9/11, when a group of mostly Saudi terrorists sent thousands of innocent victims to their deaths. Countless Americans realized for the first time that Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabi strain of Islam - a radical, aggressive, and poisonously intolerant creed - was the incubator of the world's most virulent anti-American savagery. Saudi oil fuels the world, but the enemy we are fighting is fueled by the feverish religious bigotry that is Saudi Arabia's other leading export. Unless we squarely face that bigotry, and cast a cold eye on the regime that sustains it, the war on terror is one we will not win.