US risks losing War on Terror unless it confronts Saudi funding

The U.S. risks losing the global war on terrorism if it doesn’t attack the worldwide infrastructure of Islamist extremism that breeds and nourishes violence. That infrastructure, warns Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Alex Alexiev in testimony before a Senate terrorism panel in a hearing on “Terrorism: Growing Wahhabi Influence in the United States,” is financed by Saudi Arabia.

The hearing was held on Thursday, June 26, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room.

“Most of the measures taken to defeat Islamic terrorism to date have been essentially tactical in nature and therefore of transitory effect,” Alexiev says.

Alexiev served for nearly two decades as a senior analyst in the national security division of the Rand Corporation. He is appearing as an expert witness in a hearing on Wahhabi backing of terror before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Homeland Security, chaired by Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

The U.S., Alexiev says, has “attempted to come to terms with the psychology behind the terrorists’ murderous fury, yet refuses to examine systematically, let alone do something about, the effect and implications of daily indoctrination of hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Muslims around the world into a hate-driven cult of violence.

“Similarly, we have tried and often succeeded in disrupting the terrorists’ tactical organizational structures and communications networks, but have paid scant attention to the huge worldwide infrastructure of radical Islam which breeds and nourishes violence.” That infrastructure, Alexiev says, provides most of the funding and the recruits for terrorism.