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Should We Be Kinder to Terrorists?
NOW on PBS examines Saudi Arabia’s controversial “soft policing” policy

“Terrorist Rehab?” aired May 22nd

 New York – Can terrorists be rehabilitated with kindness? On Friday, May 8 at 8:30 PM (check local listings) NOW on PBS partners with best-selling author and journalist Robert Lacey (The Kingdom, Majesty) to investigate the surprising success of Saudi Arabia's approach to dealing with terrorists and extremists – without torture or water-boarding. Given extraordinary access to the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry and its practices, Lacey visits terrorist rehabilitation camps that use 'soft policing' tactics to be NICE to the bad guys.

The film, produced by Oscar-nominated LOKI Films (Jesus Camp) & Emmy-award winning Political Bytes Productions, shows the Saudis providing a private jumbo jet to bring inmates home from Gitmo, giving them a hero’s welcome, then sending them to a converted holiday resort to try to re-brainwash these hard line young men. It's a program that has been copied in other parts of the world – including by some of America’s forces in Iraq. The film follows a rehabilitation class in which the young prisoners are taught the ‘correct’ rules of Holy War.

Is this rehab program working, and can we trust the Saudis to protect themselves – and us – against the threat of Islamic extremism in the future? Watch this NOW on PBS report for a perspective on terrorism you’ve never seen before.

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Called “fearless about challenging conventional wisdom” by Tom Brokaw and "one of the last bastions of serious journalism on TV" by the Austin American-Statesman, the Emmy-winning PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW engages viewers with documentary segments and insightful interviews that probe the most important issues facing democracy. NOW is a production of JumpStart Productions, LLC, in association with Thirteen/WNET New York. The show can also be accessed through On-Demand television, audio podcasting, video podcasting, and streaming video on the NOW website at www.nowonpbs.org.

Newsmax.tv
Lacey: Fears of Sharia Law Takeover in West

 

Robert Lacey, who recently completed a second book about Saudi Arabia, says the country’s government consists largely of pro-Western moderates.

“The moderates in Saudi Arabia would dearly love to push all the bearded extremists on to a boat and send them off into the sea,” Lacey told Newsmax.TV. His new book is “Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia.”

Seventeen of the ministers in Saudi Arabia’s cabinet hold master's degrees and Ph.D's from American universities, Lacey said.

“The westernized elite who run the country realize the only way ahead is more science education, less religion, more tolerance, more mixing of the sexes. It’s a day-to-day battle they fight against the extremists.”

To be sure, Lacey says, there’s a segment of Saudi society that hates Americans. “That’s what my book is about,” he said.

“How this intolerance and dislike boiled up so that not only were 15 of the 19 [Sept. 11] hijackers Saudi, but of course the inspirer of the whole episode, Osama bin Laden, was a Saudi as well.”

And what inspires their hatred? “It comes basically from America’s commitment in the Mideast to the state of Israel and the fact that until recently Saudi Arabia was committed to trying to push Israel into the sea,” Lacey said.

“They’ve changed since — that’s the government — but deep down in society, there’s a lot of anti-American feeling.”

Saudis want the best of the West, Lacey said. “But when they look at American culture, at the decadence of some of it, at the open display of sexuality in the more degraded forms of American culture, they feel that justifies their view that America is the Satan.”

Saudis hold mixed views about former President George W. Bush, Lacey said.

On one hand, they strongly object to his invasion of Iraq. That’s because in their view Bush deposed a Sunni government, the Saudi government’s own persuasion, and handed Iraq to the Shiite Muslims of Iran, whom the Saudis distrust.

But the Saudis appreciate Bush for seeking an independent Palestinian state at the same time that he was strongly allied with Israel, Lacey said.

“He was the first American president to try that — to create a balance between Israel and to acknowledge Palestinian rights. For that the Saudis thanked him.”

Robert Lacey on Morning Joe
How the U.S. Helped Create al-Qaida

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The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region. The doctrine was a response to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, and was intended to deter the Soviet Union—the Cold War adversary of the United States—from seeking hegemony in the Persian Gulf. After stating that Soviet troops in Afghanistan posed "a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil," Carter proclaimed:

The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil . . . .
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

This last, key sentence of the Carter Doctrine, was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser. Brzezinski modeled the wording of the Carter Doctrine on the Truman Doctrine,[1] and insisted that the sentence be included in the speech "to make it very clear that the Soviets should stay away from the Persian Gulf."