Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[AmericanPride]

Why did they do it then?

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey provides good context and consequences for the incident on Saudi Arabia. In it, he describes how the material prosperity of KSA in the 1970s triggered a religious reaction (not unlike other societies that experience similar changes). The surprise and audacity of the event shocked the Saudi leadership, and in the hopes of repairing their religious legitimacy as they built their material wealth, the Saudi state made a deliberate decision to move closer to its own religious right to appease the anxiety about modernization and Western influences. For al-Otaybi and his men in particular who seized the mosque - they thought they were ushering in the arrival of the Mahdi and the overthrow of the House of Saud. They were all killed or executed.

Now your 'strategy' of annihilating a religious city - well, that's a guaranteed method to create more al-Otaybis, bin Ladens, and al-Bahgdadis.

4. What possibly could be the West's "long-term plan" for countering these narratives since it no longer has the military might nor the legitimacy to enforce its will on people in the developing World - nor a narrative that gels with the World's poor?

There is no long term plan. The U.S. does not do long-term strategy and what strategy it does do, it does not do very well.