(New York Times) - Thomas L. Friedman After 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. A terrorism bubble had built up over there - a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. There was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die. The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.
2003-06-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive