Saudi Arabia says ready to beat militants from Iraq

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I recently posted a comment over at Political Notio with respect to MJ's piece entitled, "A Response to Terrorism" I suggested, "

What I'd like to see is a stronger and serious lobbying effort on the part of the Western world to bring the governments of the Middle East and Central Asian nations to take a solid stand against the terrorist cells in their own nations. Whether it's Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan or any other, the governments of those country must, for lack of a better phrase, pick a side. As rediculous as it sounds when he says, there is something to Bush's cowboy statement, "Your either with us or with the terrortists." In the case of the above mentioned countries, they must either stand before their people and declare war against the terrorists or quite frankly there's nothing anyone will be able to stop another rediculous land invasion that won't tackle the actual problem (Iran I'm looking in your direction).

By the same token, if the Arab/Muslims gov. actually pick a side (the Western one obviously) and stay there, the Western world has to do all it can to back up said governments against a large mass of people sympathetic to the terrorists cause. That of course means we end up continuing to support despots but I offer this, do we go with the devils we know, or the devils we don't know.

Frankly, given a choice I'll take the Saudi Royal family over Mullah Bin Laden at this juncture.

Arab Special Forces and Intelligence agencies need to be working hand in glove with Western Special Forces and Intelligence services. There's really no other way to do this. Full scale war is overkill and a legal investigation first takes too time much and consumes too many resources versus how much will actually get accomplished and second, it simply sends the wrong message. We are at war. There's no doubt about that. But gone are the days where nations can carpet bomb cities into the stone age while massive waves of foot soldiers lay siege to everything and everyone the bombs missed. Nations can do it militarily but nothing ends up being served. We bombed what little was left in Afghanistan after the Soviets left and the Taliban took over and then we had to rebuild the country nearly from scratch. In Iraq we tried to rebuild as we were bombing it. That tells you something right there. Total annihalation of a city isn't what it used to be.

What is called for is precision. Information needs to flow freely from the spies in the field to the Special Forces so they can respond in a time fashion. That can't happen unless we have complete cooperation from said Arab/Muslims governments. Right now such cooperation is half-assed at best and non-existent at worst."

Now It would appear that maybe, just maybe, my suggestion is starting to be followed in Saudi Arabia. According to this article, "Saudi militants returning from Iraq will be even tougher than the veterans of Afghanistan but the kingdom, which is battling a two-year wave of al Qaeda violence, is ready to defeat them, a senior minister said."

The article also states that the Saudi's have "functionally eliminated" Al Qaeda in their home country but passions still run high as does racism against the west so they must continue to be vigilant against terrorism.

There's something to be said for looking out for your own skin. If the Saudi Royal Family are starting to realize that thier best chance for survival is to work with the West instead of fueling the terrorism when we're not looking then we may have taken a major hill in this war. We shall see.