hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/26/republican-extremists-saudi-terrorism/
I watched American extremists attack our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, and while their uncompromising fervor and fanaticism was shocking, it was not altogether unfamiliar to me. When the crowd erected the wooden gallows with the noose, I felt a sense of deja vu that took me a few days to pinpoint: The gallows set up outside the building reminded me of looking at Deera, or “chop chop,” square in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a site for frequent public beheadings and the same place where the beheaded bodies sometimes are later crucified. This was and still is a weekly event in Saudi Arabia.
Watching domestic terrorists erect a set for public execution outside the Capitol was all the more disheartening to me because I spent a good part of my career at the CIA fighting to keep this kind of extremism from reaching our shores. And I fear that many do not grasp the potential consequences of letting this type of lawlessness stand without loud condemnation by every single member of Congress. This is not the time for equivocation or political maneuvering to remain in power. Here, we could learn something from the Saudis.
The capitulation by Saudi political leaders to Islamist extremists was born hundreds of years ago in a twisting path that is the subject of many scholarly dissertations. But what I observed as a counterterrorism officer at the CIA was that Saudi political leaders are hamstrung when they try to curb violent jihad (commonly known as “terrorism” to Americans) emanating from the kingdom. They understand that a crackdown would imperil their reign, and they are forced to recall their original bargain with Saudi extremists: A coexistence deal was hatched centuries ago between the Bedouin Saud tribe and the dogmatic and violently puritanical Wahhabi religious sect of Islam. This partnership was restated in 1901 when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born, and then bluntly driven home with the 1979 deadly takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by a particularly virulent faction of religious extremists who believed Saudi politicians had allowed the country to degrade and become too liberal and modern. The leader of the siege, a religious extremist leader called Juhayman, was uneducated and preached his extremist views mostly to the uneducated. During the takeover, hundreds died, including Saudi government security officers and religious pilgrims. The details of this clash are also much debated, but one thing’s for sure: Saudi political leaders heeded the refresher on who called what shots in the kingdom.
Calling the Capitol riot ‘terrorism’ will only hurt communities of color
And the takeover of the mosque later gave rise to Osama bin Laden, who referenced the mosque takeover and Juhayman in his own call to arms. So it’s really no surprise that the vast majority of 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Nor that the Saudis’ assistance in the global war on terrorism was tepid and on very much their own terms. Nor that, more recently, the Saudis killed an American journalist critical of the royal family. The Saudi rulers are transactional: They will do whatever they need to, with whomever they need to, to stay in power. And so the deal they hatched endures: The family holds power mostly unmolested, in exchange for endorsing Wahhabi religious extremism and its violent enforcement of the same.
When I left the CIA in 2015, I had been chief of the counterterrorism technical collection initiative against al-Qaeda and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups — once in 2003, and again in 2013. So I was struck by how the Jan. 6 insurrectionists employed the same online tactics to rally people to the cause and grow followers as the foreign extremists I had followed during my career had used. By 2013, Islamic extremists understood and fully embraced the sophistication of a broad range of online communication platforms, as well as how to use them to quickly organize adherents. Foreign extremists had learned how to grow a Twitter account, with the help of commercially available software and disciplined hashtagging, so accounts could expand from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of followers in a startlingly short period. Some of those followers were fervent and unreasonable religious fanatics. Many were unemployed, disenfranchised and hurting economically — just kicking around looking for a cause.
Former president Donald Trump, his loyalists in Congress and their adherents have much more in common with Middle Eastern terrorists than just Internet manipulation. They both target certain groups for support: the disenfranchised, the jobless, the unbending religiously fervent. Republican political leaders have apparently decided that it is worth pandering to Americans who have been radicalized because they represent a political base that will help them retain power — just as the Saudis did. Look how this base responded to Trump’s tweets about a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6. Adherents flocked to town from all over the country. Trump whipped them up further by personally addressing a rally that morning, asking the crowd to fight on his behalf, to march to the Capitol to “stop the steal.” He also threw then-Vice President Mike Pence under the bus, showing clearly that fanning the flames of extremism with his base was more important than personal or political loyalty. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) trotted by the crowd, fist raised in solidarity.
My wife guarded the Capitol. My mom joined the horde surrounding it.
And so, after decades of sacrifice by the U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence officers working to fight terrorism — too many of them living and dying far from home — Trump brazenly built his own extremist faction and incited them to conduct terrorism in America.
We didn’t know it at the time, but the 9/11 attackers did not present an existential threat to America. It is true they inflicted a horrible wound we will never forget. But we cleaned up, rebuilt and came back stronger as a nation, attuned to the foreign terrorist threat and unified never to let it happen again. Homegrown extremism, fostered by political leaders, is even more horrific and longer lasting. Just look to Saudi Arabia when its political leaders stray from the deal they made with radicals there. When the Saudi government does not heel to its homegrown extremists, bombs go off in the kingdom. People die.
I doubt that the political leaders of Saudi Arabia envisioned or wanted the United States to be attacked on 9/11. But by making a deal with the devil — Wahhabi extremists — to remain in power, the Saudi royals enabled attacks on the United States. I have little doubt that in the aftermath of 9/11, the Saudi rulers fully understood that the attacks were sown by their own actions and inaction.
The same goes this month for Republican leaders who are either equivocating or continuing to pander to the American extremists they value as a political base. Trumpists are playing with dark forces they do not fully understand or control. At the Capitol, we saw a preview of what could come if the GOP doesn’t renounce the very American extremists that Trump enabled. A deal made with extremists to remain in power doesn’t just dissipate.
It will dog all of us for decades.
Jan. 6 was not quite 9/11. Thankfully, far fewer people died. But in another sense, the attack on the Capitol was more chilling — because American extremists were behind the deaths, not Islamist fundamentalists. And there’s more coming if American politicians cling to the single goal of climbing into bed with anyone to remain in power.
