RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The king of Saudi Arabia has warned that extremists could attack Europe and the U.S. if there is not a strong international response to terrorism after the Islamic State group seized a wide territory across Iraq and Syria.
While not mentioning any terrorist groups by name, King Abdullah's statement appeared aimed at drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight against the Islamic State group and its supporters in the region. Saudi Arabia openly backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is concerned that the breakaway al Qaeda group could also turn those very same weapons on the kingdom.
"If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America," he said at a reception for foreign ambassadors Friday.
The Saudi royal family has done more than any other agency in the world to spread the Islamic vision (Wahhabi) which brainwashes and spawns tens of thousands of jihadi head-choppers the world over, so this is pretty rich, coming from them. For any who don't know how this works, Saudi money pays for the Wahabbi missionaries and madrassas (religious boys' schools) to spread the fundamentalist strain of Arabian Islam to the corners of the planet.
Things are pretty dire in the region still, but it looks like we are now in a combined rollback ("our side") and consolidation (IS). This is a bit of good news, as taking key infrastructure back from IS, especially revenue generating stuff like oilfields and refineries, is vital to any kind of a coherent strategy to smash them and limit their ability to hurt people.
Too bad the Americans don't have a strategy. The question of how much blood and treasure to devote to this conflict is not a simple one, but it is mostly a question of materiel (mostly JDAMs and Hellfires) which as I mentioned earlier you can get the Saudis to pay for, likewise fuel costs and maintenance. As for the rest of it, I have a strategy for dealing with this as I'm sure the Planning elements in the Pentagon do, so this is just political incompetence. Obama's mantra for his second term seems to be "No, We Can't."
Of course they may also be distracted by the widening war in eastern Ukraine, but really that's Europe's problem. The NATO side of it (i.e. existing members) is getting attention to tell the Russians unequivocally where the buck stops, but Putin is exploiting the EU grey area that is Ukraine. It's a stretch to say that IS and the proxy (and increasingly direct) war for "Novorossiya" are connected, but the IS situation is certainly a distraction to the US and to some extent for NATO.
I guess it would be too much to ask that the various regions sort their own issues out, at least as long as the USA retains the global capability it still has. This "multipolar" world still have one pole that sticks up more than the others, but it could stand a bit taller still under (sensible) decisive leadership, though that also appears too much to ask.
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