A Disturbing Letter from a Saudi

I RECEIVED the following email from someone describing himself as a "Saudi Citizen." I have no way of knowing whether it is authentic, but its particulars seem accurate to me and I invite readers of FrontPage to comment.

Message from a Saudi Citizen

Do not forget that radical Islam is more pervasive in the Arab world than Christianity is in the West. There is no "dissent" or "constructive engagement". The goal of Islam is to destroy anything or anyone that is not Islam. The US is responding, but your intelligence services are still sclerotic and slow. Are you paying attention America? There are two fronts on this war: one military (9/11) and one political.

Islam is colonizing the US, Europe and Asia. Bush is wrong to say that most American Muslims are anti-Terrorism. If they did not cheer in the streets on 9/11, they cheered in their homes. I was with Hussein Ibish and Hamid Faraoui that day, watching them cheering and singing, then denouncing the attacks on TV later that day. Khatami, Hussein and Assad reach out to US democrats, journalists, etc. Many Arabs loved the remarks of President Carter, joking "we may have to kill him last."

Ordinary Americans are rising to the occasion, showing patriotism, sacrificing husbands and fathers. Your coastal elites are assisting radical Islam. They want America to be tolerant of terrorism and to imagine themselves guilty of previous generations crimes. We watch your news. We know this is true. [Bill] Moyers goes as far as saying Judaism, Christianity and Islam are equally guilty of terrorism. These comments are played on Saudi TV amongst reports of Israelis eating Palestinian children. Susan Sontag and Bobby Fischer got front page billing in the Saudi press for comments supportive of the 9/11 attacks, flanked by a pair of stories detailing US racism against Muslims and the killing of Palestinian babies at Israeli hospitals. Lies, of course, but seem true next to actual comments by Americans.

It surprises us moderate Muslims to see half of American society help radical Islam kill America and the West. Your political left is justifying terrorism in the minds of the "Arab street" as you call it. They forget that Usama bin Laden has higher approval numbers in Saudi Arabia than Bush has in the US. Every bit of self doubt or anti-Americanism helps bin Laden. Every Saudi student that comes home after a US college education repeats the anti-Americanism he hears at university. "You see, they even hate themselves," is a refrain heard from many Saudi graduates of US universities.

I can't tell America what to do, but anyone can see what you are doing to yourselves.

Makkah Al-Mukarramah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

State level LE and bureaucrats will be the logical people to do the checking. Every illegal who is staying here is going to have to go to a local government office sooner or later to get ID, or a permit for something or to apply for some sort of benefit, or is going to run into local LE in one way or another. I think what we're going to see is that Bush won't even approach this issue.

This may come down to a few states challenging the federal usurpation of state power to approve or deny immigration of foreign nationals. That usurpation was accomplished piecemeal, with a provision concerning citizenship in the first section of the 14th amendment and then later by legislation. There was never a Constitutional amendment passed to grant the federal government the power to admit immigraqnts and grant them citizenship. That was a reserved state power and under the terms of the 10th amendment, it's still a reserved state power which can be exercised by any or all of the states.

To silence the critics of ethnic profiling by the states, the 14th amendment would have to be repealed. I think it should be anyway, but this situation is a very strong contemporary argument for doing so. Ashcroft announced that ending racial profiling would be a priority in his administration of the DoJ. I don't think he has any political courage in this area myself.

We may not agree on methods for implementing the solution, but we agree on what the solution obviously is. To me it's very obvious.

"Anyway, concerning the content itself, it strikes me as the sort of piece that isn't written to change minds, rather to reinforce an existing belief (a belief which I happen to hold already, in case you hadn't guessed). So on the scale of importance, it just doesn't rate very high."

True.

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