In my earlier post on the Taliban severing ties to al Qaeda, I said the following:

Al Qaeda was never particularly popular in Afghanistan, where the people are, after all not Arabs, and they have about as much love for rich Arabs as we in the United States do.

Bin Laden was there because the Taliban wanted his money, not him.

When they were in control of Afghanistan, not only were they not fierce protectors of him, but they were trying to find a way for help the US make him dead in a way that gave them some plausible deniability.

As Sortition notes (In the comments of the previous post. BTW, read his blog, Pro Bono Statistics), this could be construed as an endorsement of bigotry against Arabs. This is not my intent.

To the degree that some people in Afghanistan or the West dislike “Arabs”, it is an indictment of those people, who are exhibiting bigotry toward Arabs.

Arabs are people like everyone else, and they love their families, just like everyone else, and while there are shortcomings in the governance of most Arab states, these are issues of complaints against the ruling elites.

So, a criticism of the House of Saud (or Mubarak in Egypt, or Qaddafi in Libya, or the Al-Sabah’s of Kuwait, or the Zayed’s of the UAE, the Assads of Syria, al Bashir in Sudan, King Mohammed of Morocco, etc.), or its policies is no more a criticism of the Arab people than criticism of the rulers of America, Goldman Sachs, would be a criticism of the American people.