Robert Evans

Yeah, it's one-to-one.

So we're back, and we're talking about Muhammad bin Nayef leading the kingdom's response to a surge of terrorism by al-Qaeda inside the country.

Now, a major characteristic of Naif's response was a commitment to avoiding the kind of collateral damage that would have made it look like the situation was totally out of control, right?

You don't want to be blowing up too many things or killing too many civilians as you search out for these al-Qaeda operatives because it makes it seem to the people like maybe the royal family has no idea what's going on.

Maybe you guys are completely out of your depth here, right?

We used to be a proper country.

So he distinguished himself from his peers by ordering his forces to focus on outreach to the families of dead al-Qaeda operatives.

Parents were told their children had been victims and received a degree of state support in dealing with the social fallout from their children's

actions rather than being suspected themselves and told that like your child is, you know, you should be ashamed of your kid.

They were told like, no, you're your kid was a victim of terrorism, too.

Right.

And the goal of this is to not create more terrorists.

If you make the whole family seem like they're all targets, then more of them are going to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda and potentially join and become a problem.

Smart.

Yeah, he doesn't want to do what the U.S.

No, you guys are victims in this, too.

His responses were generally seen as effective, reducing al-Qaeda's influence in the kingdom.

Perhaps the best evidence of that was the fact that bin Laden and company considered him a strategic target worth expending resources to take down.

Here's how bin Hubbard described the first attempt on Mohammed bin Nayef's life.

Now, first off, that's rough.