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We Can Win - and We Must

(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - We did not choose the war on terrorism. It chose us. Americans wake up every day knowing they are threatened by Islamic radicals willing and eager to die in a holy war against "The Great Satan." Our national commitment to defeating them will brook no equivocation. We are still uniquely vulnerable because of the frustratingly amorphous nature of nonstate terrorism and the fearful ease of mass murder by suicidal maniacs willing to die in order to effect carnage. They reflect the dysfunctionality of much of the Arab world, which has proved a breeding ground for dictators, fanaticism, and terrorist networks determined to exploit our civic values by shooting from hospitals, mosques, and ambulances, and corrupting the innocent and the ignorant. Suicide murder is the Palestinians' major contribution to our civilization. The emotional infrastructure for these atrocities arises from the deliberate fabrication of political facts by the Muslim leadership with which we have yet to find a way to cope. Obviously, we must eliminate terrorists wherever we find them, but we must also provide an example of moral leadership and devote resources to transforming education in the Muslim world, replacing the odious madrasahs that are the breeding grounds for hate. These so-called religious schools are often financed by Saudi Arabia, which has halfway awakened to the fatal disease it has incubated, but Shiite Iran remains the greatest threat. It is radically ideological, seeks nuclear weapons, and sponsors Syrian terrorism as well as most of the terrorism in Iraq. It also sponsors and arms most of the face cards in terrorism's unholy deck - Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah.
2004-09-08 00:00:00
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