Why the West should applaud these autocratic kingdoms with dubious human rights records

Without countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) might not even exist. Qatar has credibly been accused of financing ISIS and al Qaeda, or at least turning a blind eye to their domestic fund-raising, and Saudi Arabia not only houses some of ISIS's big financial backers but also promotes and bankrolls the ultra-conservative Wahhibi school of Islam that forms the basis of ISIS's murderous, archaic theocratic vision. The Arabian Peninsula kingdoms and emirates are also autocratic places with few civil liberties and dubious human rights records.

Still, when the U.S. started its risky bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria on Monday night, it was the Saudis and three other Gulf Arab nations — United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Bahrain — that flew alongside U.S. warplanes. Qatar assisted in other ways.

France is bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and Britain's Parliament is voting today on whether to join in, but in this fight, European allies — even pacifistic modern Germany — don't count for that much, at least diplomacy-wise. Substantively and symbolically, this needs to be a battle where Muslim Arabs — Sunni Arabs, like ISIS — are taking the fight to ISIS. Now they are. Let's give them credit for that.

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And they're not only sending a dozen or so fighter jets, they're also sending some big guns, metaphorically as well as literally. Two of Saudi Arabia's pilots are members of the royal family, including the son of Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, the defense minister as well as heir to the Saudi throne. The kingdom emphasized its skin in the game by releasing photos of the smiling prince, Khaled bin Salman, in the cockpit of his Tornado fighter jet. The very public participation of Prince Salman is seen as a signal to the Saudi public and the world that Saudi Arabia is a committed partner in the ISIS fight.

The UAE made a potentially even bigger statement, sending a female pilot, Maj. Mariam Al Mansour, as leader of the UAE's bombing squad. That's a pretty powerful refutation of ISIS's misogynistic ideology. The U.S. pilots of a tanker plane were so surprised to hear a woman respond to their call about refueling, UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said on MSNBC, "they paused for 20 seconds."

"I think it’s important for us moderate Arabs, moderate Muslims, to step up and say this is a threat against us," Otaiba added. America strongly agrees.

Not that it was an easy feat getting the Gulf emirates and kingdoms on board. The key moment, a Sept. 11 meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah, followed "months of behind-the-scenes work by the U.S. and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when," The Wall Street Journal reported this week.

The Saudis' really want to topple Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, and both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. saw the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a necessary first step to fight ISIS. Both Maliki and Assad are allies of the Saudis' Shiite rival, Iran. But once the Saudis were on board, the rest of the Gulf states followed.

And while the Arab Gulf states have more to gain by defeating a powerful enemy that wants to destroy them, they also have a lot to lose. ISIS has threatened to attack any country that supports the U.S.-led campaign, and both Saudi Arabia and Jordan share borders with Iraq; Jordan also borders Syria. The Saudi princes taking part in the airstrikes are reportedly receiving specific death threats, and ISIS is believed to have significant support among the Saudi populace.

Do the Gulf kingdoms and emirates have their own motives — ulterior and self-serving — for joining in the attack against ISIS? Of course. Are they complicit in its rise to power in the first place? Almost certainly. Are the Gulf Arab nations models of Western ideals and values. Hardly. But the U.S. needs their support in the ISIS fight, and their participation counts.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been allies for decades, of course, but as Reuters points out, this many Arab countries haven't joined the U.S. in a military campaign since the first Persian Gulf war in 1991 — when the goal was to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. "They are no longer active, influential neutrals, and are now fast becoming frontline states in a war that is likely to engulf the whole region," British academic Christopher Davidson tells Reuters.

That's a pretty significant development, and a crucial one for a nation that has ruled out putting combat troops on the ground to fight ISIS. America doesn't have to love the Gulf Arab states. But let's give them their due.