(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - When confronting an existential enemy - an enemy that wants to terminate your very existence - there are only two choices: appeasement or war. Today there is no doubting the intentions of Arab-Islamic radicalism. The intention, endlessly repeated, is the establishment of a primitive, messianic caliphate - redeeming Islam and dominating the world - Taliban Afghanistan, writ large. Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, is right that the war on terror is not resolved by force alone. How is it won apart from hunting down terrorists and destroying terrorist regimes? By reversing the Arab-Islamic world's tragic collapse into oppression, intolerance, and destitution, in which popular grievances are cynically deflected by repressive regimes and clergy into the virulent anti-Americanism that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001. Which means trying to give desperate and oppressed people a chance at the kind of freedom and prosperity that we helped construct after World War II in Europe and East Asia.
2004-03-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive