Lawrence Wright On al Qaeda

From Hugh Hewitt:

"They haven't accomplished what they hoped to do in Iraq"

But what scares him:

"There's a reason why young Saudis leave the Kingdom to go fight the Jihad. Because they would rather fight it in their own country and that's the goal of al Qaeda. They want to train these young men, and then turn them against the regimes in their own countries.

"It's a mistake for the Saudis to not clamp down much stronger on these young men who are leaving the Kingdom and then joining the Jihad, but they're in a fix. They want to show their support for the Sunnis, and the Sunnis are under attack in Iraq, and so it's a real paradox for the Saudis."

Wright brings up an idea that Thomas P.M. Barnett proposed, that the U.S. pull back from the worst part of Iraq in the hopes that the sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shi'a accelerate.

The possible intentions of al Qaeda with regard to Saudis in Iraq makes this proposition ever more of a gamble. As Dean Barnett wrote, that is Pathetic Wishful Thinking.