President Bush and the citizens of the free world face a monumental challenge in responding to terrorism. Whether or not Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind Tuesday’s atrocities does not really matter. Bin Laden is merely the tip of an unspeakable iceberg.
There are dozens of radical Moslem groups including Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah which already consider themselves at war with the United States, all of whom find our misery thrilling. Most of them cooperate with one another.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli Prime Minister, points out that the people of freedom-loving countries are already at war with radical Islam, and that several Islamic countries are currently developing nuclear and biological weapons, which they will use on American cities as soon as they are available.
Netanyahu is right. Either we defeat terrorism, or we die. That’s the choice we face – an easy one, for most Americans. What is not so easy is our response: we must eliminate the capacity of terrorists to deliver mass destruction.
That is not so simple. It involves much more than a few air strikes against bin Laden’s bases in the Afghan mountains, or even leveling Kabul, or Kandahar. We must also eliminate nuclear weapons research in a host of countries, including Iraq, Syria, Iran and others, and wipe out enough of their military capacity to keep ourselves and our allies safe.
The Moslem lunatic fringe wants to kill us all, and will do so if an when they get the capacity. We must not forget that.
Removing the threat of radical Islam will not be quick, and may need to repeated every so often – like pruning a noxious weed. The details will be extremely unpleasant, to us and to our enemies. We will lose a lot of soldiers, sailors and airmen. We may suffer further terrorist attacks on American soil. But any lesser response will risk the destruction of our civilization.
After my own military service, during Vietnam, I pledged that I would never let any of my children be used as “cannon fodder” in a pointless war. But I can no longer say that. The stakes are too high. We must all be willing to serve and sacrifice in whatever way necessary to bring our “holy war” against terrorism to a successful and just conclusion.
Everett
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