Maginnis: Unless you like oppression, there's no reason to visit Saudi Arabia

Maginnis: Unless you like oppression, there's no reason to visit Saudi Arabia

A Pentagon advisor and national defense expert sees no compelling reason for Christians or Jews to visit Saudi Arabia, despite a new campaign by the Saudi government to boost tourism.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Saudi government-run Supreme Commission on Tourism has announced a number of initiatives in an attempt to boost the number of foreign tourists to 1.5 million annually by 2020. But despite those incentives, the Saudi government continues to bar Jews and Christians from bringing items such as Bibles, crucifixes, and Stars of David into the country -- and threatens to confiscate them on sight.

Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (U.S. Army-Ret.) says Saudi Arabia is no friend of the United States -- and the leaders of the oil-rich nation, he adds, need to be recognized for what they are.

"They're religious bigots. They're intolerant of anyone who is not a Wahabbist Muslim," Maginnis says bluntly. "And the Saudis fund most of the radicalism that we're facing," he adds. "They refuse to cooperate like we believe that they should in stopping the jihadists that kill almost half of the soldiers in nearby Iraq. All they're doing is changing oil into weapons that end up killing Americans."

And when it comes to tourism, Maginnis says, there is really no compelling reason for any Christian or Jew to want to visit such a country. "It's mostly sand -- and it's incredibly hot," he notes. "And we're not allowed to going anywhere close to Medina and Mecca, which are their holy cities. So you can't even go to the only few places that someone might be marginally interested in going to. They will not allow us to have any freedoms hardly at all in their own country."

According to Maginnis, about the only thing the Saudis will let Americans do is buy their oil.