Tolerance Arabia: Vijay Prashad unravels the tangled role of Saudi Arabia in the region's volatile mix of neocolonialism, oil, and theocracy. (A new Era).

Just before 10 a.m. on the 11th of September, the clocks in the World Trade Center stopped. Tons of inflamed jet-fuel melted the steel girders of the mammoth towers and sent five thousand people to their death.

It was the handiwork of a handful of men, 19 all told, who, as we learn later, did not come from among the wretched of the earth, the hungry and desolate who have no options left in the world but to go out with a bang. Rather they came from among the educated middle class of Saudi society, with access to European technical education and with a reasonably bright future before them.

And yet the U.S. went to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, ...