The strand of Islam that gave rise to al Qaeda is powerful. It has strong native roots in Saudi Arabia, and the royal family itself has members who are sympathetic. In many ways, to fight Islamic radicals would be to fight themselves, and the Saudis have no interest in this. This is not their fight, to say the least.

Therefore, the current political situation logically requires that the Saudis expel U.S. forces. In normal Saudi style, this will be neither a quick nor a methodical process. It will come in stages covered with good manners. But the outcome is inevitable.

For the United States, if Saudi Arabia were to withdraw from the U.S. coalition, it would have tremendous implications going far beyond the fight for al Qaeda. Obviously, dreams of a war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein are toast. Indeed, one of the straws that broke the back of Saudi tolerance was constant U.S. discussion of whether or not to go to war against Iraq, as if the United States could assume that the Saudis would simply follow the American lead.

The more important question, of course, is the future of the Persian Gulf, which remains a critical source of oil. There are other countries

where U.S. forces can be based in the region. But the geography is such that merely basing forces is not enough.

Unless the United States is content with a strictly naval presence in the Gulf, then Saudi Arabia alone provides the geography needed for substantial deployments of land forces to fight the necessary wars. The country is the heart of the Arabian Peninsula; everything else is either peripheral or, like Iraq or Iran, not available to the United States.

It is politically and morally impossible to abandon the war on al Qaeda. Therefore, in