Adam's Apple
Senior Member
- Apr 25, 2004
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A Hang-Tough Nation
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report
10/24/05
In recent months, public support for America's intervention in Iraq and for the broader war on terrorism has fallen significantly at home. This is a grievous misapprehension of where we are--and where we recognized we were after 9/11, when there was broad consensus that the nation was in danger from a new kind of terrorism. The consensus that sustained us then may have proved evanescent, but the fact is there are radicals out there who want to kill us all--any American, men, women, and children. Why? Because in their delusional thinking, they believe Islam provides the justification for it. As one Egyptian commentator put it: "Allah conceived Islam as a religion. Men have transformed it into politics."
The reason this is so difficult for us to understand is that this culture of death is the polar opposite of our culture of life. And it was not created by intervention in Iraq. Iraq may have sharpened the resentments of some radical Islamists and given them a new excuse, but there was no Iraq war in 1993, when they first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, nor before 9/11, when they did blow it up. The attack on the USS Cole took place after U.S. forces contributed to the NATO-led operation in Kosovo that saved the lives of many, many Muslims.
The turmoil now roiling the Islamic world is described vividly in an important new book by Tony Blankley, The West's Last Chance. The exploding torrent of Muslim energy, something not seen in 500 years, is being fueled by billions of petrodollars coming out of Saudi Arabia in support of an aggressive antiwestern religious teaching called Wahhabism. And it's spreading not just to other Muslim countries but also to the disaffected among the Muslim communities in Europe who can be trained on the Internet in almost every aspect of terrorism.
Nearly 9 in 10 Americans worry, rightly, about the vulnerability of our mass transit systems, our cargo imports at ports and airports, our water supply--indeed, our traditionally free and open society. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggests that there is a very high probability (70 percent) of a successful terrorist attack within the next 10 years with weapons of mass destruction, and the very sober former secretary of defense, William Perry, puts the odds of a nuclear attack in the next five years at 50 percent.
The president spoke none too soon in his recent speech emphasizing that Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terrorism and restating our larger purposes there. His assertion that we cannot afford to falter, as we have faltered in previous conflicts when the going got tough, is dead-on. Pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq too soon would be the equivalent of rocket fuel for the Islamofascists. Iraq would become the new Afghanistan, a safe base from which to launch attacks on us and wage a war against nonradical Muslim governments. And speaking of which, isn't it long past time for Iraq's neighbors to begin condemning the murders of thousands of Muslims in the name of Islam by the Iraqi insurgents?
for full article:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/051024/24edit.htm
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report
10/24/05
In recent months, public support for America's intervention in Iraq and for the broader war on terrorism has fallen significantly at home. This is a grievous misapprehension of where we are--and where we recognized we were after 9/11, when there was broad consensus that the nation was in danger from a new kind of terrorism. The consensus that sustained us then may have proved evanescent, but the fact is there are radicals out there who want to kill us all--any American, men, women, and children. Why? Because in their delusional thinking, they believe Islam provides the justification for it. As one Egyptian commentator put it: "Allah conceived Islam as a religion. Men have transformed it into politics."
The reason this is so difficult for us to understand is that this culture of death is the polar opposite of our culture of life. And it was not created by intervention in Iraq. Iraq may have sharpened the resentments of some radical Islamists and given them a new excuse, but there was no Iraq war in 1993, when they first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, nor before 9/11, when they did blow it up. The attack on the USS Cole took place after U.S. forces contributed to the NATO-led operation in Kosovo that saved the lives of many, many Muslims.
The turmoil now roiling the Islamic world is described vividly in an important new book by Tony Blankley, The West's Last Chance. The exploding torrent of Muslim energy, something not seen in 500 years, is being fueled by billions of petrodollars coming out of Saudi Arabia in support of an aggressive antiwestern religious teaching called Wahhabism. And it's spreading not just to other Muslim countries but also to the disaffected among the Muslim communities in Europe who can be trained on the Internet in almost every aspect of terrorism.
Nearly 9 in 10 Americans worry, rightly, about the vulnerability of our mass transit systems, our cargo imports at ports and airports, our water supply--indeed, our traditionally free and open society. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggests that there is a very high probability (70 percent) of a successful terrorist attack within the next 10 years with weapons of mass destruction, and the very sober former secretary of defense, William Perry, puts the odds of a nuclear attack in the next five years at 50 percent.
The president spoke none too soon in his recent speech emphasizing that Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terrorism and restating our larger purposes there. His assertion that we cannot afford to falter, as we have faltered in previous conflicts when the going got tough, is dead-on. Pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq too soon would be the equivalent of rocket fuel for the Islamofascists. Iraq would become the new Afghanistan, a safe base from which to launch attacks on us and wage a war against nonradical Muslim governments. And speaking of which, isn't it long past time for Iraq's neighbors to begin condemning the murders of thousands of Muslims in the name of Islam by the Iraqi insurgents?
for full article:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/051024/24edit.htm
