Republicans are appeasing extremists the same way Saudi leaders do
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.
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/26/republican-extremists-saudi-terrorism/
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