(USA Today) Robert Andrews - This is not a war about Israel. Or U.S. foreign policy. Or global inequities. It is a war on Western culture. It will not end until the U.S. recognizes that the threat is rooted in an extremist religious ideology that fuels organizations such as al-Qaeda. President Bush and other leaders never have missed an opportunity to announce that we are not at war with Islam. True, we are not. But to prove this, we tiptoe around the brutal fact that an extremist portion of Islam considers itself at war with us. By ignoring this insurgency's religious mainspring, we avoid facing the monumental job of draining the radical Islamist fundamentalist swamp that will produce successors to today's bin Ladens and generations of suicide "martyrs" to continue their war against us. The writer served as deputy assistant Secretary of Defense (2001-2002).
2004-03-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive