The problem with Saudi Arabia is not that the Wahabbis are building weapons, or planning to invade neighboring countries, or are killing hundreds of thousands of Saudi citizens.

The problem is that they are actively spreading a philosophy of hatred around the world, powered by close to 90 billion dollars in oil money.

Fighting this is not a trivial problem, or one that lends itself to conventional military, or even diplomatic solutions. One cannot easily claim that a propaganda program, however we may disagree with it, is a violation of human rights or liberties. To the best of my knowledge, nobody is hauling Muslims into these radical schools at gunpoint, at least not in Europe and America.

I don't know to what extent the teachings would have to go before they became criminal. Surely it would be illegal for a Muslim school to teach methods of making bombs and instruct students to plant them under railroad bridges. But can it be considered illegal, at least in Constitutional America, to teach that Jews and Christians are subhuman?

Syria and Iran are actively supporting insurgent and terrorist acts. Maybe there's a military solution to something like this.

Saudi Arabia, or at least the Wahabbi elements, are fighting a war of ideas. It needs to be fought in the realm of ideas.

In the United States, where many of our students are taught that it is wrong to believe our ideas are better, that it is wrong to believe that our system is virtuous, that self-doubt is the height of philosophical maturity, we may not have the ammunition to fight this kind of a war with an opponent that believes their ideas are worth blowing themselves up for.