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It is my contention that our foreign policy was wedded to the Muslims throughout most of the eighties and nineties. This was based on several motivations.

One was the presumed natural anti-communism of the Muslims, which made them a good counterweight to the Soviets. The Soviets had obviously made their inroads into the Muslim world, with tighter than tight relations with Iraq and Syria, and at one time, Egypt.

We for our part were teamed with the Saudis, of course, and over time managed to bring Egypt out of the Soviet camp.

Our partnership with the Muslims reached its height in the Afghan struggle when we, with Saudi support, ejected the Soviets from Afghanistan.

It was the motivation behind President Carter's shameful betrayal of the Shah of Iran in favor of the Ayatollah, again based on the premise that the Ayatollah would be a natural enemy of Communism.

During the Iran Iraq war we allied ourselve with Iraq, and began to try to wean them away from the Soviets, and over to "our" side.

This partnership with the Saudis is what led us to back the Chechens against the Russians, and the Uighars against the Chinese, the Kashmiri rebels against the Indians, and to turn a blind eye toward the killings of Christians in Indonesia and the Phillipines.

It is what led us to back the Kosovars in their insurrection, and to intervene energetically on the side of the Bosnian Muslims.

Our foreign policy has been effectively designed by Riyadh for more than a decade, particularly under Bush Sr and Clinton. This is why we have tracked, but not interfered with Muslim radicals in our midst. This is why we did not go after Bin Ladin energetically; he had attacked us, but he was also attacking the Russians and Chinese, so the emphasis was on discouraging him from attacking us, rather than on eliminating him.

September 11 changed that. In the aftermath, we have abandoned Bin Ladin, the Chechens, the Uighars, and have cut the Saudis out of our foreign policy loop.

Iraq is going down, and my prediction is in the aftermath the House of Saud will be thrown over the side as well.

and the Uighars against the Chinese

I think a lot of people have been inappropriately mentioning the Uighurs ever since 9/11. What the heck did we ever do for them? We're behind the power curve on this one - China is the one example where Christian and Muslim interests coincide. And it is the opinion of some circles that it is the Han Chinese converts that are the crazy Muslims - the folks in Eastern Turkistan do not generally lean towards Islamism - that way of thinking is not dominant among Turkic-speaking Muslims.

When the REAL war comes, it would sure be nice to have some Uighurs already groomed to host our A-Teams so we can sabotage the infrastructure of Central and Western China.

Our foreign policy has been effectively designed by Riyadh for more than a decade, particularly under Bush Sr and Clinton. This is why we have tracked, but not interfered with Muslim radicals in our midst.

It certainly seems that way. Bush sr. and Clinton were both Global World Order types. Additionally Clinton was also a closet Marxist, but he only kept that door slightly ajar. It seems real odd to me that the current King of Saudi Arabia would have a Mansion in Europe (Spain ?) that is actually a marble replica of our White House. Have we had a defacto king for the past decade or two ? If the house of Saud was controlling our foriegn policy, why do foriegn Muslims in general hate us ? Is this due to mismanagement from the House of Saud or are they using the US to develop the muslim hate ? That would support the possibility that we are being led to another cold war type standoff between the muslim world and the non-muslim world. The other possibility is that a third party such as China or Russia is throwing some major monkey wrenches into the House of Sauds control. Now that could be possible if the chinese or russians were using the non-Muslim marxist Saddam as the wrench and the extremist islamists as the monkeys.