Stephen Kinzer Arabia Quotations

Weapons systems the U.S. sold to the Shah of Iran wound up in the hands of Islamic militants who seized power there in 1979; a comparable scenario in Saudi Arabia is hardly impossible.

Saudi Arabia supplies much oil to the U.S. And it is the world's largest consumer of American weaponry.

Other places are also generators of far-flung violence beyond their own borders - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are obvious examples - but none has as long a history of war, resistance, and terror as Chechnya.

The idea that Arabia is best run by Arabs is no more palatable to Western leaders today than it was to Napoleon or Churchill.