You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden
Of course, it’s far too nuanced an issue to boil down in a couple of sentences but such is the nature of online discourse.
I see Al quaeda, and in a more general sense, Sunni extremism as a whole as the child of Saudi Arabia. The bombing of the US Cole was probably the point when the Saudi regime realised that exporting Salafist Jihad abroad had bigger consequences than they intended (attack regional opponents like Israel and Iran) and that it was quickly getting out of control and so they attempted to distance themselves in case America and Britain turned around and cut off their military aid.
I’m not sure how much the kingdom was involved in Al Qaeda’s early years, unless you count American-Saudi-British funding of MAK/other Mujahideen during the soviet-afghan war. However, it’s clear Al Qaeda was already declaring against the kingdom a couple years before the USS Cole in '98. But sure I’d see Al Qaeda being a child of SA in a way similar to the KKK being a child of the US
You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden
Of course, it’s far too nuanced an issue to boil down in a couple of sentences but such is the nature of online discourse.
I see Al quaeda, and in a more general sense, Sunni extremism as a whole as the child of Saudi Arabia. The bombing of the US Cole was probably the point when the Saudi regime realised that exporting Salafist Jihad abroad had bigger consequences than they intended (attack regional opponents like Israel and Iran) and that it was quickly getting out of control and so they attempted to distance themselves in case America and Britain turned around and cut off their military aid.
I’m not sure how much the kingdom was involved in Al Qaeda’s early years, unless you count American-Saudi-British funding of MAK/other Mujahideen during the soviet-afghan war. However, it’s clear Al Qaeda was already declaring against the kingdom a couple years before the USS Cole in '98. But sure I’d see Al Qaeda being a child of SA in a way similar to the KKK being a child of the US