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Treatment of Saudi Arabia After 9/11

A working US-Saudi alliance was formed in 1944, and persisted thereafter for decades. For the American public, Saudi Arabia was an unfamiliar and exotic land, but in some vague way a friendly one, like something out of the recent movie "Hidalgo."

American public perception changed sharply as a result of a single day: September 11, 2001. Within days after the terrorist hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it was learned that they had been carried out by al-Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, is a Saudi national. It was soon learned that 15 of the 19 hijackers were also Saudis (Calabreze 1). While al-Qaeda and bin Laden had become increasingly notorious for several years previously, the unprecedented enormity of the 9/11 raised American public consciousness to an entirely new level. Saudi Arabia came to be viewed by most Americans in a new and sinister light. Had the US government chosen to respond to the attacks by invading Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan, the measure would surely have drawn wide public support.

However, the official response with respect to Saudi Arabia has been strikingly unlike the response to the Taliban in Afghanistan, or later to Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which had no significant connection to al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attack. Within days of the terrorist strikes, while civil air traffic across the United States will still grounded, the government arranged a special airlift to return a number of Saudis to their homeland, with only cursory examination by the FBI. Among those repatriated were a number of members of the (very large) bin Laden family (Krugman).

Favorable official treatment of the Saudi government and of Saudi Arabia as a whole has continued. The Bush Administration barred publication of, reportedly, some 17 pages of a joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attack that dealt with Saudi connection. It is widely suspected among intelligence analysts t...

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Treatment of Saudi Arabia After 9/11. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:36, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1693717.html