drilling for tolerance
Charles Johnson
Tue Oct 30, 2001 at 1:32 pm PST • Views: 180
Thomas Friedman with still more about the duplicitous, autocratic House of Saud: Drilling for Tolerance.
The truth is, there are at least two sides to Saudi Arabia, but we’ve pretended that there’s only one. There is the wealthy Saudi ruling family and upper middle classes, who send their kids to America to be educated and live Western-style lives abroad and behind the veil at home. And there is an Islamist element incubating religious hostility toward America and the West, particularly among disaffected, unemployed Saudi youth.
It is said that truth is the first victim of war. Not this war. In the war of Sept. 11, we’ve been the first victims of our own inability to tell the truth — to ourselves and to others. It’s time now to tell the truth. And the truth is that with the weapons of mass destruction that are now easily available, how governments shape the consciousness, mentality and imagination of their young people is no longer a private matter.
Frank says: