In military terms, the Saudi security apparatus is probably capable of suppressing Isis on its own territory, just as it did with al-Qaeda a decade or so ago, but it is in no position to confront Isis at the ideological level.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, the captivating desert scenery is used to depict the Middle East in a tale of an al-Qaeda-busting CIA agent.
While America and its allies have dithered over calls to arm more moderate wings of the opposition or to impose no-fly zones, the most alarming militants have grown in clout, including fighters who have sworn fealty to al-Qaeda.
But they could re-establish a grip on large parts of the south and east of the country, give succour to al-Qaeda, and sow the seeds for a new civil war.None of those outcomes is remotely in the West's interests.
The president called the initial Syria strikes a sign that "we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people".Much was made of a separate, American-only set of eight airstrikes on the night of September 22nd against the Khorosan Group, an al-Qaeda offshoot, at a base near the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Moreover, with its Syrian franchise, the Democratic Unity Party (PYD), bogged down in a nasty war with assorted Syrian rebels and worse with al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, the PKK can hardly afford to resume its battle in Turkey.The Kurds could join forces with the protesters and trigger a fresh wave of unrest.
Instead, he attacked Mr Bush's insistence that he would have made the same decision again: "Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq?
The Saudis, accused by Yemenis of turning a blind eye to al-Qaeda-minded groups in the hope of pushing back the Houthis, have no credible plan for a political settlement in Yemen, not least because they refuse to talk to the Houthis.
He rid the kingdom of al-Qaeda, though liberals note he also suppressed peaceful dissent.
And in the early 2000s al-Qaeda carried out a series of bombings in Riyadh, targeting foreigners and royals, whom they accused of being in cahoots with the "Crusaders".Nowadays the main security threat comes from outside Iran's expansion, chaos in Yemen and jihadists inspired by Islamic State (IS), which has turned parts of Iraq and Syria into a "caliphate".
One of the advantages of this approach for America is that it involves other countries directly in the effort to defeat and dismantle al-Qaeda.
