----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad DeLong" <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
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> Not at all. On Max's criteria, the Saudi government has not funded
> Al-Qaeda, is not harboring Al-Qaeda, and has not refused demands to
> turn over Al-Qaeda leaders.
==================== < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44931-2001Nov5.html > "They've been playing . . . kind of a double game here," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said recently on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They've satisfied their extremists within their own societies . . . [and] also financed some of these organizations." Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), on the same program, said the United States "can't tolerate a nation like the Saudis -- whose government, in many ways, continues to stand because we support them -- to promulgate that hatred."
< http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4285601,00.html > After weeks of investigation in the US and in Saudi Arabia, FBI agents are sure that the majority of the men were from Saudia Arabia. They also claim that some of the recruiting, planning and financing of the attacks occured in the country...The kingdom's officials have insisted that al-Qaida did not have a network and Bin Laden had "no support" there.
< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39762-2001Nov4.html >
PARIS -- European investigators say they increasingly believe that the Sept. 11 hijackers and their support network in Europe made up a carefully chosen and tightly insulated group that had little if any contact with other al Qaeda terror cells in Europe and learned from past terrorist failures while planning the attacks.
******** Just because the SA gov. did not directly write checks to whoever was ultimately responsible for 9-11 does not mean they are not responsible. Their actions are no different from the manner in which you and I and every US citizen on this list pays money to the Pentagon to run the current incarnation of the School of the Americas. By the logic we have applied to Afhanistan, several Latin American countries would be justified in bombing Miami and other urban areas where the US government allows former state terrorists to live the good life.
I'm not making a blame the US first argument here; I am calling for a rethink in order to halt another iteration of the 'rush to judgement' problem the US is famous for. I'll leave it to Max to decide whether his criteria need revision. I'm happy to be wrong about this, I'm trying to understand Max' position better. If he changes or sustains his position that's fine with me. As he said, lot's of this is academic. That's a larger problem given we live in a formal democracy and Bush, Rumsfeld et al are our employees and we can only correct them ex post via elections.
< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33022-2001Nov2.html > "Second, the Saudis are going to have to solve their internal security problems for themselves. That's probably for the best. Riyadh is likely to do a better job of it than Washington."
*********** Well they've been solving them by externalizing them, to borrow a term from the neoclassicals. Now the costs of said externalization have reached the point of diminishing returns. In that sense, 9-11 was a pincers movement against them by some of their own dissidents. The Seymour Hersh piece on the SA state provides the explanatory context. The link is gone but if you haven't seen it, it's a good read. We may see a further move against them during Ramadan.
The Taliban wretched
The Northern Alliance is wretched
The House of Saud is wretched
The 1st is partly, if not largely, what it is because the 3rd exported it's problems to a different space-time location. It can no longer afford to do so and the anger level in the ME *including SA* is now higher due to US action. What is the meaning of 'bringing the criminals to justice' in this context? The virtues and limitations of applying methodological individualism to an extreme tragedy in international relations are in stark relief given the last 63 days. Continued use of it to evade tough issues is likely to exacerbate the analytical and strategic errors that have already been made. The overdetermination of events calls for restraint, especially against the innocent. We have failed to minimize the loss of human life, another shame on, and disgrace of, US policy
Watch Pakistan and SA,
Ian