I thought the Saudi attack had killed Christian Arabs? J Goldberg had a post about this over at the Corner: http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_11_23_corner-archive.asp#020121

TO: Stephen Green
RE: I Disagree

Yes al Qaeda is attacking Muslims and Arabs. But it is attacking those who are not toeing their flavor of Islam.

The effort is to silence or convert those who disagree with them. It's been done before. And, I suspect that the Muslims, under years of letting other people think for them, could be susceptible to this sort of 'argument'....shut up or we'll kill you AND your family.

It's been tried before. And successfully. I'm reminded of a place called Koji Do. Albeit on a smaller scale, the ruthless prevailed over the moderates by murdering them and stuffing their bodies into the latrines. The lesson was quickly learned to do it the hardliner's way or you were dead meat.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

From Ledeen at NRO:

Instead of winning support, the terrorists had galvanized public opinion against them. But this misses the essence of the terror masters' campaign against us. It is not our policies that inflame the hatred of the mullahs and the wahhabis, the Shiites and the Sunnis, the Osamas and the Mughniyahs. It's not what we do, but what we are — a free and successful society — that threatens them. The tyrannical terror masters know that our existence undermines their own authority and their own legitimacy in the eyes of their own people. So long as we exist and flourish, they are threatened by their own people. To have freedom and success arrive on their very doorstep is even worse. Therefore, all those in Iraq working to make it a free and successful country are treated as enemies.

I thought this to be spot on. Clearly not as up beat as Dunnigan.

TO: Ledeen @ NRO
RE: Really?

"Instead of winning support, the terrorists had galvanized public opinion against them." -- Ledeen@NRO

Care to provide the stats supporting that idea?

Regards,

Chuck(le)

Dear All

Probably most of you never has read an arab newspaper, or heard an arab newsbroadcast. The blame for such terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, or, Turkey, is laid with the "zionists" [i.e., the CIA, or Mossad] Even in moderate countries, like Jordan and Turkey where the news may be presented more in accord with western media, the people will still believe the real attackers are non-muslims.

Ingrid has a point. Arabs manage simultaneously to believe that the 9-11 attacks were actually done by the Mossad, not bin Laden's people, and celebrate them as great victories for the Islamist jihadis. With total irrationality like that there is no telling what Arabs will talk themselves into thinking.