There have been voices since 9/11 decrying the President’s close friendship with the Saudis and declaring that had Al Gore or John Kerry been President, the U.S. would have stood up more firmly to the chief enablers of the global jihad, the House of Saud. We at Jihad Watch have frequently been critical of Bush’s ties to the Saudis, but this article indicates that the alternative would have been no better in this regard (and of course, much worse in others). American politics needs a third response to Islamic jihad. It has not arisen yet.
From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia “” Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed “terrible abuses” against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.
Gore said Arabs had been “indiscriminately rounded up” and held in “unforgivable” conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into Al Qaeda’s hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.
“The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake,” Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. “The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”
Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.”