Wretchard over at Belmont Club wrote an interesting article titled "The Man with No Name". He referenced another article titled "Jihad as a whole" by David Warren. The theme of both articles is Al Qaeda has been misidentified as the true enemy. It is argued that the Wahabi branch of Islam is the true enemy (Al Qaeda is merely a subset of Wahabi Islam). This is not a new concept but it is a disturbing one. The state religion of Saudi Arabia is Wahabi Islam. In fact, the Al Saud family owe their political and religious authority to Wahabiism. If we attack Wahabiism then by default we must attack Saudi Arabia and the Al Saud family. It is not at all obvious to me that we should be seeking a fight with Saudi Arabia. Also much of the mischief coming out of the Middle East actually has Iran's finger prints on it. Iran of course is mostly Shia and not Sunni Muslim, let alone Wahabi Islam. I suspect simply going after Wahabis is too easy of an answer.

On the topic of Iran, David Warren wrote another article titled "Nuclear mullahs". Warren points out the obvious threat posed by Iran armed with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles. He mentions that Israel doing a repeat for Iran of what they did to the Iraqis by destroying their Osiraq reactor is not an option (the Iranian nuclear program is too big and too spread out). Warren mentions that it is really up to President Bush to deal with Iran's nukes. However Bush won't have that option until after he is reelected and that might be too late.

Gary