What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of our civilization. Each one of us today understands that we are all targets, that our cities are vulnerable, and that our values are hated with an unmatched fanaticism that seeks to destroy our societies and our way of life.
I have absolute confidence that if we, the citizens of the free world, led by President Bush, marshal the enormous reserves of power at our disposal, harness the steely resolve of a free people, and mobilize our collective will — we shall eradicate this evil from the face of the earth.
But to achieve this goal, we must first however answer several questions: Who is responsible for this terrorist onslaught? Why, what is the motive behind these attacks? And most importantly, what must be done to defeat these evil forces?
The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it.
Terrorists train, arm and indoctrinate their killers from within safe havens on territory provided by terrorist states. Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse.
The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taliban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and several other Arab regimes, such as the Sudan. These regimes are the ones that harbor the terrorist groups: Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; Hamas, Hezbollah and others in Syrian-controlled Lebanon; Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized Fatah and Tanzim factions in the Palestinian territories; and sundry other terror organizations based in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum.
The growth of this terror network is the result of several developments in the last two decades: Chief among them is the Khomeini revolution and the establishment of a clerical Islamic state in Iran. This created a sovereign spiritual base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy worldwide, a militancy that was often backed by terror.
Equally important was the victory in the Afghan war of the international mujahadin [literally, those that wage jihad] brotherhood. This international band of zealots, whose ranks include Osama bin Laden, saw their victory over the Soviet Union as providential proof of the innate supremacy of faithful Muslims over the weak infidel powers.
To this should also be added Saddam Hussein’s escape from destruction at the end of the Gulf War, his dismissal of U.N. monitors and his growing confidence that he can soon develop unconventional weapons to match those of the West.
Finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat’s terror enclave gave a safe haven to militant Islamic terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Like their mujahadin cousins, they drew inspiration from Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon, glorified as a great Muslim victory by the Syrian-backed Hezbollah. Under Arafat’s rule, these Palestinian Islamic terrorist groups made repeated use of the technique of suicide bombing, going so far as to run summer camps in Gaza that teach Palestinian children how to become suicide martyrs.
Here is what Arafat’s government-controlled newspaper, Al Hayat al Jadida, said on Sept. 11: “The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson. These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history. They are the most honorable people among us.”
A simple rule prevails here: The success of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout the network.
This then is the who. Now for the why.
The main motivation driving the terror network is an anti-Western hostility that seeks to roll back the West and install an extremist form of Islam as the dominant power in the world. And it seeks to do this by destroying the enemy.
Militant Islamists resented the West for pushing back the triumphant march of Islam into the heart of Europe many centuries ago. Its adherents, believing in the innate supremacy of Islam, then suffered a series of shocks when in the last two centuries that same hated, supposedly inferior West penetrated Islamic realms in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
For them the mission was clear: The West had to be first pushed out of these areas. Pro-Western regimes in the Middle East were toppled in rapid succession, including in Iran. And Israel, the region’s only democracy and its purest manifestation of Western progress and freedom, must be wiped off the face of the earth.
Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West — because they see it is an island of Western democratic values in a Muslim-Arab sea of despotism. That is why they call Israel the Little Satan, to distinguish it clearly from the country that has always been and will always be the Great Satan — the United States.
But re-establishing a resurgent Islam requires not just rolling back the West; it requires destroying its main engine, the United States. And if the United States cannot be destroyed just now, it can be first humiliated — as in the Tehran hostage crisis two decades ago — and then ferociously attacked again and again, until it is brought to its knees. But the ultimate goal remains the same: Destroy America and win eternity.
Does anyone doubt that given the chance, they will throw atom bombs at America and its allies? And perhaps long before that, chemical and biological weapons?
Some states of the terror network already possess chemical and biological capabilities, and some are feverishly developing nuclear weapons.
The time for action is now.
Today the terrorists have the will to destroy us, but they do not have the power. There is no doubt that we have the power to crush them. Now we must also show that we have the will. And now the third point: What do we about it? First, as Bush said, we must make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that support them. We must dismantle the entire terrorist network. To achieve this goal we must first have moral clarity. We must fight terror wherever and whenever it appears. We must declare terrorism a crime against humanity, and we must consider the terrorists enemies of mankind, to be given no quarter and no consideration for their purported grievances.
Armed with this moral clarity in defining terrorism, we must possess an equal moral clarity in fighting it. If we include Iran, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority in the coalition to fight terror — even though they currently harbor, sponsor and dispatch terrorists — then the alliance against terror will be defeated from within.
Such a coalition will melt down because of its own internal contradictions. We might win a battle. We will certainly lose the war.
These regimes, like all terrorist states, must be given a forthright demand: Stop terrorism, permanently, or you will face the wrath of the free world — through harsh and sustained political, economic and military sanctions.
To win this war, we must fight on many fronts. The most obvious one is direct military action against the terrorists themselves. Israel’s policy of pre-emptively striking at those who seek to murder its people is, I believe, better understood today and requires no further elaboration.
But there is no substitute for the key action that we must take: imposing the most punishing diplomatic, economic and military sanction on all terrorist states. To this must be added these measures: Freeze financial assets in the West of terrorist regimes and organizations; revise legislation, subject to periodic renewal, to enable better surveillance against organizations inciting violence; keep convicted terrorists behind bars. Do not negotiate with terrorists; train special forces to fight terror; and not least important, impose sanctions on suppliers of nuclear technology to terrorist states.
On Sept. 11, I, like everyone else, was glued to a television set watching the savagery that struck America. Yet amid the smoking ruins of the Twin Towers one could make out the Statue of Liberty holding high the torch of freedom. It is freedom’s flame that the terrorists sought to extinguish. But it is that same torch, so proudly held by the United States, that can lead the free world to crush the forces of terror and secure our tomorrow.
It is within our power. Let us now make sure that it is within our will.