AH Challenge Feminist President goes after Saudi after September 11

[Derek Jackson]

September 12 2001

President Pat Schroeder decides to use all the power of the United States to deal with Saudi Arabia and its official sponsorship of the more extreme and intolerant version of Islam and the involvment of so many powerful forces in Saudi implicated in the September 11 attrocity

[zoomar]

Go for it, Pat!

My sister, who is a card-carrying socially-liberal feminist democrat, sincerely wanted to see Mecca turned into, as she put it, "a field of glass" after 9/11. One cannot underestimate how the misogynist image of conservative Islam (burkha's, polygamy, islamic codes) creates loathing among western women.

[Adamanteus]

It won't happen for purely political reasons.

I'm sure the US administration knows full well who to take the blame for the worldwide jihad movement. After all, where else did Osama bin Laden take his lead than Wahhabi imams in Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia actively supports this kind of Islam with one hand, while remaining moderate with the West with the other hand. It's a double-dealing, Byzantine operation if I've ever seen it.

The problem is that to take out Saudi Arabia will bring the whole Muslim world, and some of the West, down on American heads. Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are far easier to get away with. Both were internationally alienated and couldn't hope for much support.

Even if Pat Schroeder asked for it, her advisers would advise against it.

[zoomar]

It won't happen for purely political reasons.

I'm sure the US administration knows full well who to take the blame for the worldwide jihad movement. After all, where else did Osama bin Laden take his lead than Wahhabi imams in Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia actively supports this kind of Islam with one hand, while remaining moderate with the West with the other hand. It's a double-dealing, Byzantine operation if I've ever seen it.

The problem is that to take out Saudi Arabia will bring the whole Muslim world, and some of the West, down on American heads. Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are far easier to get away with. Both were internationally alienated and couldn't hope for much support.

Even if Pat Schroeder asked for it, her advisers would advise against it.

Darn. As Teddy Roosevelt stated in The Wind and the Lion, "Why spoil the beauty of a thing with legality?" ;)

[tom]

MUST a president follow his (her) advisors?