[chantal7]

I think it's stupid of the Muslims to feel so threatened and insecure that they won't let "infidels" enter Mecca or Medina nor do they want us in Saudi, nor even the Middle East. Riyadh, Bagdad, Tehran, Jeddah, all other places in the world but Mecca and Medina are not truthfully holy ground to their religion. They're just like greedy little kids and they need to grow up.

Their position on this matter is absolutely ridiculous and what they REALLY want is for there to be no "infidels" on earth and that is their version of Islam's true goal and want.

I can't tell you how white hot angry their stupid childish position makes me everytime I hear it.

I really think that to stop their nonsense we'll one day have to go in and either take over Mecca and Medina and open up those towns to the people of the world or else bomb them back to glassy desert sand.

They also need to learn to base their God and religion on the truth for once instead of on their wet dreams and envious hatred.

They seem to be anal retentive and anal compulsive as well as being retromigent reactionaries.

*spits to the side* Worthless, childish animals is all they are now.

P.S. The above is for all Muslims except for the good Muslims, you know who you are (paraphrasing Mark Twain).

[VA Advogado]

This is breaking news? Dude the world's been talking about this for at least TWO days.

[VaBthang4]

No.....we like your bases just fine. Deal with it!

[gfactor]

funny. a US withdrawl from saudi is one of OBL's stated goals.

[zog]

--wild card. India and pakistan conflict is still on the table at the 50/50 level. china is pushing for the islamics at this point, for their own purposes. china is also the up and coming world petroleum market of note, not quite the us level yet, but within ten years or so. Saudi sells oil for a living. Fatcat saudis like their jobs. they need to sell more oil, plus have a country will sell them anything military they got the cash for without getting "approval' from some foreign congress. their dude in the street there has no use for the US or the west in general anymore, except as a consumer target that is increasingly going elsewhere for oil. Russia has just announced they will be competing with saudis in the market, and sell to the west. What to do if you are a saudi fatcat? One answer is to gradually sever ties with the west and concentrate on china and the other islamic nations, and let japan in on it as well, if they will play ball and stay neutral. I'm guessing they will kill 4 birds with one stone, so this article might be right on. Their only gamble is maybe with iraq, but they will use iran to play them off with. And if they cut ties to the US more, even completely, then what's to stop them getting their own nukes, now that pakistan has them, and china and north korea is willing to sell? With nukes and missiles, which they could afford easily, they might consider themselves strong enough to remain stable and intact, without any US presence, plus, they can score a lot more brownie points in the islamic world by being even more anti israel that they are now, and the fatcats will still retain the option of bugging out if they have to. Cash (and gold of which they have literally tons) still walks on this planet.

[boris]

As I said, we should give them what they want.

Let us pull out. Leave smoking rubble where "our" base was.

Send a note to Saddam Hussein that we will not lift a finger to save the Saudis, should he happen to invade.

Maybe build a 4-lane highway to the border with Iraq.

--Boris

[Lent]

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally, have been severely strained since September 11

Now why would this be? Wouldn't the death of thousands of men, women and children by terrorists engender great sympathy and a single purpose to destroy this kind of terrorism? Not if you believe the Saudis are funding the Pan Arab Islamic agenda including the Jihad.

[hoot2]

"SAUDIS TELL U.S. FORCES TO GET OUT "

this is perfect....now, we should tell the u.n. to get out,
n go to "Ha'il", saudi arabia....
if only p.j. o'rourke was the press sec., he could get away with it, then say, "only kidding..."

[Demidog]

Good. I'm sorry it has to be under such circumstances. But I hope we listen and get out. We've most certainly overstayed.

[DugwayDuke]

Any bets how long before Justin Romandado runs an extra using this for another diatribe from Antiwar.com?

[MJY1288]

The Prince Sultan Airbase is a huge facility, (Built by Bin Laden Construction) Not to mention very accomidating. Today I heard almost every branch of our Government shoot this report down like an Iraqi flown Mig29. What the Saudi's are doing is playing politics with the uncontrollable's they are harbouring. In other words, Paul Begala is their new spin doctor

[Jonathon Spectre]

Good. While we're pulling out our troops let's pull out all our damned foreign aid and drill in the ANWR and anywhere else we can so we can stop buying oil from these faithless "friends". What do you call a country whose most modern institution is thirteenth-century caliphate government? Saudi Arabia.

[mrustow]

The US is reluctant to withdraw its 4,500 troops from the Prince Sultan air base, south of Saudi's capital Riyadh, because it could be perceived as a propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden, who frequently protested at the presence of non-believers so close to the main Muslim holy sites.

Or it could be perceived as a confirmation that this is a war of Islam vs. America (read: the West).

[Bush2000]

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, who is in Nepal, denied the Saudis wanted a withdrawal: "There has been no discussion of such an issue."

The Saudis would make an attractive target. They have no military. They have plenty of oil. And they're surrounded by rotten fascist Arab scumbags ... Would you kick out the U.S. under these same circumstances?

[MississippiMan]

I'd love to see the chirade of them being our "ally" brought to a close. Bet they holler for help when Saddam comes a' knockin. At which time we should tell them...

MM

[Dec31,1999]

Saudi Arabia's rulers are poised to throw US strategy in the Middle East into disarray by asking Washington to pull its forces out of the kingdom because they have become a "political liability". Senior Saudi officials have privately complained that the US has "outstayed its welcome"....

Well then, let's destroy our base, nuke Mecca and Medina and get the heck out.

[sneakypete]

Screw 'em. We should bomb them on the way out. Hell,we should have bombed them to start with,since that is where most of the money that finances the terrorists comes from.

[Dec31,1999]

He said six years ago: "There is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land [of Arabia]."

As you wish. But not before we take out your center of operations. Now y'all can pray to a radioactive crater.

[isthisnickcool]

Didn't some guy from Texas that's now in Washington say something like "either you are with us or against us"?

[CreekerFreeper]

Terrorism Is Just Means of Fighting

Militant Islamic Fundamentalism Is the Enemy

By Linda Chavez

The Week of October 22, 2001

We are not fighting a war on terrorism. Terrorism is the means by which our enemy chooses to wage war against us, but we should not confuse its tactics with the nature of the enemy itself.

The enemy has an ideology. It has a command structure. It has troops. And it is clear in its aim—nothing short of the destruction of our civilization.

The enemy is militant Islamic fundamentalism. The command structure is made up of hundreds of mullahs around the world, including some living in this country, who preach death to the infidels.

Its troops include not just the thousands of trained terrorists but the millions of others who support the mullahs and finance the terrorists through their donations to radical Islamic groups. To pretend otherwise risks not only our own defeat, but that of the moderate Moslem world as well.

Threat Extends Across the World

In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington presciently described "a quasi war develop[ing] between Islam and the West." Even before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Huntington noted, "many more Westerners have been killed in this quasi war than were killed in the ‘real’ war in the Gulf."

The direction of Islam as a religion has become increasingly threatening to nonbelievers, not just in the West but throughout the world. Its threat extends beyond the Middle East to Asia and Africa, even to the United States, where some fundamentalist imams spread their hateful doctrines protected by our 1st Amendment.

Not all, or even most, Moslems are our enemies, certainly. Indeed, the moderate Islamic nations are on the front lines of this war and have been among its first casualties, starting with the Iranian revolution in 1979. Some of the most brutal tactics of the fundamentalists have been used against fellow Muslims in Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, the response of virtually every moderate Moslem leader to the threat posed by fundamentalists has been to accede to the fundamentalists’ interpretation of Islam, and to further the Islamization of all social, cultural, and political institutions in their countries.

Even Turkey, which since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s policies of secularization in the 1920s and 1930s has been the most pro-Western Moslem nation, has become more Islamist in the last few years. As Huntington observed, every Moslem country in the world is more Islamist today than it was two decades ago, with the exception of Iran—but only because Iran was the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.

Despite what our leaders keeping telling us, Islam is not inherently a peaceful religion. Unlike Christianity, in whose name wars have been fought but without any Scriptural basis to support those wars to be found in the teachings of Jesus Christ, Islam can find explicit justification for its jihad or "holy war" within its sacred text.

The Koran instructs believers to "slay the idolaters . . . make war on the leaders of unbelief—for no oaths are binding with them—so that they may desist. Will you not fight against those who have broken their oaths and conspired to banish the Apostle? They were the first to attack you. Do you fear them? Surely God is more deserving of your fear, if you are true believers. Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them."

The Koran is filled with elaborate instructions on the conduct of war, the methods of executing the infidels, the rewards that will accrue to those martyred in a holy war.

The very nature of fundamentalism is to take these instructions literally. And there is plenty of historical precedent. For nearly 1,000 years, Europe was under nearly constant siege from Islamic invaders, from the first Moors who conquered Spain in 710 to the last Ottoman attack on Vienna in 1683. So long as the trend within the Moslem world today is toward a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, the West will continue to face a new threat to its survival.

________________

Linda Chavez, a nationally syndicated columnist, is president of the Center for Equal Opportunity .

© Human Events, 2001