Sadly, I believe that’s an overly simple response. Absolutely, Wahhabism is one of the roots of Islamic extremism, though it is far from the only influence. “Talking to the Saudis” would have been tantamount to a slap on the wrist, saying “Bad boy”. You’d still have the Taliban and al-Qaeda ensconced in Afghanistan.

That said, we could have applied pressure to many of the Islamic countries of the region that have fueled extremism’s growth. The irony is that our action in Afghanistan led to Khadafi’s relinquishing chemical weapons and the research into nuclear weapons. Yet, our destabilization of Libya, under Obama, has led to perhaps worse consequences than our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our lack of action led to ISIS is Syria. Where was the diplomatic pressure then? It was dismal.

In the end, I suppose you can say, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t take action. In the end, it’s the warped reality of Islamic extremism that creates the situation, not the actions we’ve taken. To blame us is like blaming the girl who was raped, not the rapist. It’s the desire to bomb the World Trade Center in the early 90’s, and the acts of 9/11 that revealed that a faction of Islam loathed us simply because we existed, simply because what we stood for was the antithesis of a medieval mindset that looked to roll back the clock to the 8th Century.