I'm going to take an unpopular position and say up front that I don't think the attack is very significant. This is the best they can do with a coordinated attack and 9 suicide bombers? Horrific if you're there, but al-Qaeda's effort : lethality curve just took another dive.
I hear the objections from Charles Johnson (here and here)and Jeff Jarvis. The Saudis are our enemies. Their problems will likely grow. Noted. Overall, however, my opinion is similar to Instapundit's. I ask myself: so what does this change, really? And the answer comes back: nothing much.
Al-Qaeda's objective is clear: drive away the foreign specialists upon whom the functioning of, well, pretty much everything worthwhile in Saudi Arabia depends. At best, this will create jitters among that community and force slightly higher recruiting bonuses. Unless it actually chases many of them away, however, the effect is negligible... and losing 9 suicide cadres may be a real dent these days. Events post-9/11 and post-Bali show that operations get harder after the opening shot, and al-Qaeda's long OODA Loop doesn't help. At that rate, al-Qaeda will be gone from Saudi Arabia long before the American and European specialists.
This is not a recipe for success. The Saudis and all of the Gulf Emirates have just been given an excuse to come down harder on Islamists and their cleric enablers. It wil be an improvement, but let's not kid ourselves: as in Indonesia, ideology and domestic considerations will give us a response that's more cosmetic than serious. On a brighter note, the USA now has a useful lever if it wishes to to conduct covert and semi-covert operations around the Gulf, in addition to the hayba it acquired in the Iraq operation.
Same players, same positions, same war. Al-Qaeda is bombing Westerners. We knew that. America will hunt al-Qaeda down. We knew that. Arab rulers will try to maintain their double-game, but they're being forced to choose sides and are slowly being pushed in America's direction by events. We knew that.
The War goes on. We mourn the fallen and get on with it.
UPDATE: Intelligent thoughts in the Comments section, as usual.
Joe, I think this attack is significant in another way.
Up til now, al Qaeda has avoided large-scale, high-collateral damage attacks in Arab countries: they would bomb American military facilities, they would attack American naval vessels, they would bring terror to the Afghan people, they would slaughter the people of Kenya and Ethiopia by the hundreds, and they would do their best to attack Americans on our soil. But they avoided attacks that would bring blood, ruin, and death to the oil-rich sheiks who bankrolled them.
It may be (and I hope) that their abilities have declined so much that they can only attack on a large scale in countries that sponsor them. It may also be that their nihilism and frustrated rage has finally boiled over, and they have ceased to discriminate in their choice of targeting, in which case they have finally started on the path to alienating their political support in Arabia (as al-Jihad already did in Egypt a decade ago). On the other hand, it may be that the Saudi government is finally so weak that al Qaeda feels safe enough to attack it in it seat of power.
These are just speculations, but al Qaeda's choice of targets has changed, and in that sense, I think this is significant.
I'm surprised that Joe or Glenn didn't note the connection between yesterday's bombing and a similar one that took place in Chechnya.
The parallel with Chechenya is quite to the point here: the more the Chechens tear up their home turf, surrounding provinces, and Moscow the more intransigent Putin et al become. Simultaneously, the moderate elements in the Russian apparat which tried to terminate that war in 1999-2000 look even more foolish with each passing attack, which brings the current crop of Russian imperialists to dust off their copies of 19th century military history. The Saudies, to their detriment, don't have such a relevant precedent to follow as do today's Russians.
Ray -
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis, given the '95 car-bombing in Riyadh, and the '96 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran. In this case, again, the victims were Americans and other ex-pats - typically of no major concern to the Saudis. They also are not, historically speaking, very cooperative in terrorism investigations. I'd like to think with Bush in office, that the Saudis will respond differently, but I don't think that an attack on Saudi soil is necessarily a sign of al-Qaeda's weakness.
But I also don't think this is major news. The Saudis haven't been our friends for a long time. The U.S. government has just been too polite/too pragmatic to point it out. What I will be watching for is: how well do the Saudis cooperate with us, and how will the U.S. respond if they prove to be uncooperative?
Celeste -
I think you're right - I'm overreacting. But it's still meaningful, I guess, to analyze the situation. The Riyadh carbombing was a much smaller op, not necessarily tied in to bin Laden's grand plan (although certainly sympathetic), and targeted a US-run facility. The Khobar Towers bombing targeted a US military housing compound, and there is evidence that the Towers were not the work of Saudi-native organizations like al Qaeda, but their brethren in Hizballah (link).
This attack might just be more of the same -- they did target Western housing compounds. If the vast majority of casualties were not Americans, but Saudi citizens, (as opposed to imported guest workers), this might indicate a willingness to kill large numbers of Saudis along with Americans, which would be something new.
But yeah, I goofed (mea culpa). What I've really got is a plausible scenario, not a descriptive piece of analysis.
Read somewhere that the crowm prince (I think) said this was a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia. Wonder if he really meant this or if it was just for newspaper consumption and heads will continue to be buried in sand. (And yes, it really is, in the final analysis, a war against Saudi Arabia and everybody knows it (including those who are providing the $$$) but those in power in Saudi Arabia.)
I hope the terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia follows the same pattern of gross miscalculation as previous attacks. At some point, these people will have to realize "Black Hawk Down" is a long way from the current state of the U.S. policy and mindset. Despite the tactical success on 9/11, in Bali, and in this blast, al Qaeda has made one strategic mistake after another, and they do not seem to understand (or care) that their actions only hasten their doom. This is beyond fantasy ideology. This is beyond a death cult. This is willful self-destruction on a grand scale.