Saudi Arabia Bombing To Our Advantage?

Conrad quotes a Reuters news story that portrays the recent al Qaeda bombing in Saudi Arabia as working against the terrorist organization's interests by turning ordinary Muslims against them. (It's also already being blamed on Israel — who didn't see that coming?)

UPDATE 2003-11-11 06:19:46 UTC: The implications: SDB provides, as usual, a very broad view of the implications of this bombing. He starts off by talking about Netscape (<grin>) but eventually ends up with this:

Over the last few months the US has been colder towards the Sauds. We haven't demanded that they step down, but we're asking for more in the way of concrete action. And with the most recent attack of a couple of days ago, it's become clear that the militants in Saudi Arabia are beginning to actively work to depose the Sauds themselves. The tacit truce with al Qaeda is over, and the Sauds are going to be forced to choose sides at long last, and to fight the civil war they've been trying to avoid for the last few decades. If they do that, we might help them. But they no longer get a pass; there's no "special relationship" any longer, no more blind eye turned their direction.

It's good that it's out in the open now. It's good that it's now formal policy of the government. And it's good that Bush was in no hurry to announce it; it's good that he was willing to wait until that announcement would not do more harm than good. It's good that he wasn't willing to compromise execution of the strategy just to relieve political pressure and defuse criticism.

He wrote that article in response to Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. It's a very good speech, with too many important parts to selectively quote, so read the whole thing yourself.