[Washington Post] Jim Hoagland - There is one way, at least, in which Americans are safer from surprise attack five years after Sept. 11, 2001. They live in a world that is more on guard against jihadist terrorism and more ready to act to foil it. Other nations have also had to come to terms with the threat of indiscriminate attacks on their soil or citizens by radical Islamic extremists who see their struggle as a global one. A transatlantic poll released by the German Marshall Fund on Wednesday reported that Americans and Europeans are in close agreement that the three greatest threats to global peace over the next decade are terrorism, Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and radical Islamic fundamentalism. But the international response to the threat of terrorist assaults has remained far from unified or coherent. The greatest task in the post-Sept. 11 era is to create and manage a truly integrated international campaign to displace and contain jihadist terrorism as a political weapon.
2006-09-08 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive