Who is our enemy?

by jelly 3 Replies latest jw friends

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  jelly

  THE ISSUE IS RADICAL ISLAM
  
  By FRED SIEGEL
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  September 14, 2001 -- IT was predictable. The sad sacks at the BBC were sure that if only President Bush had done more to curb Arab-Israeli tensions, the World Trade Center attacks might have been avoided. And no doubt we will be hearing more of this in the coming weeks as the apologists for Arab terrorism at the Economist, the Nation and the New York Review of Books weigh in with equally flimsy explanations.
  The issue is not Israel. Osama bin Laden blew up a U.S. embassy when the Oslo "peace process" was at the height of its "success." The issue is the inability of Islamic regimes around the globe to come to grips with the modern world.

  What did Israel have to do with the recent Islamic jihad murders in Nigeria? While Islamic terrorists were hitting New York, Muslim militants in northern Nigeria were killing Christians. The violence occurred in the majority Christian city of Jos, where the Nigerian government has imposed the Sharia (Islamic law) on the largely Christian population. The violence began when a Christian woman was attacked after she had the temerity to cross the street in front of a group of Muslim men who had gathered near a Mosque. What followed was three days of killing and burning churches.

  Around the world Islamic militants are engaging in a holy war against the infidels - from Coptic Christians in Egypt and the Dinkas in the Sudan, to Hindus in Kashmir, Bahais in Iran, Catholics in the southern Philippines and Christians in East Timor.

  In Sudan, the Islamic militants impose slavery on captured Dinkas - but wherever radical Islam is in power, it subjugates people it regards as infidels. The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, an organization supporting those persecuted by militant Islam, argues that "radical Islamism is a world ideology, fielding a world terror-army, which oppresses millions with a racist ideology" that deems non-Muslims less than fully human.

  Here in New York, it was easy to get angry listening to Egyptians, Palestinians and the Arabs of nearby Paterson, N.J., celebrate as they received word of the murderous attacks in New York and Washington. But Mayor Giuliani (who has been tireless and magnificent in this crisis) rightly warned New York- ers that it would be wrong to take their anger out on the city's Arab and Muslim residents. Attacks on Arab-Americans in Paterson or elsewhere are utterly indefensible.

  Omar, a Muslim New Yorker and former student of mine at Cooper Union, e-mailed me to say he was "sickened to watch Middle Easterners celebrate our sorrow." He is an American who has imbibed our values while maintaining his Muslim faith. He wants no truck with those who kill in the name of Islam.

  But it's fair to ask this of those non-Muslims at the BBC, the Nation, the New York Review of Books and other rationalizers of Palestinian and Islamic terror: Why is it that everywhere in the world where Muslims are in the majority, their minorities are persecuted?

  And where were these publications, not to mention respectable European leaders, when Yasser Arafat, ranting in front of a world conference at Davos, insisted that Israel was using depleted uranium and nerve gas against Palestinian civilians?

  And where were the Europeans at the U.N. "hate" conference in Durban, when Islamophobia was denounced, while Muslim discrimination against non-Muslims was passed over in silence?

  It's also time to ask Arab-American spokesmen like James Zogby, who rightly criticizes anti-Arab bigotry, why he's silent about the hate that spews daily from the Egyptian and Palestinian media, as with the current hit song "I Hate Israel."

  In Commentary, Fiamma Nirenstein asks if the silence from the West isn't what Bush, in another context, called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." No doubt our multiculturalists will explain that, while even mild anger at Arabs by Americans is sign of deep-seated racism, venomous hatred in the Arab world is merely a part of a different culture that can't be judged by our standards.

  For all their grievances against America, there have been no Cuban, Vietnamese or Serbian suicide bombers bringing death to our shores, and their people haven't been celebrating in the streets at the sight of American blood.

  America, not Israel, is The Great Satan. It was hard to acknowledge before the World trade Center attacks, but radical Islam has been at war with us for a long time.
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  jelly

  HOW TO FIGHT THE COMING WAR
  
  By NEIL KRESSEL
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  September 14, 2001 --

  EVEN if Osama bin Laden did not orchestrate Tuesday's attack - which surely he did - he richly deserves whatever punishment we can deliver.

  But he is one man, not the entire threat. What good is assassinating bin Laden if his associates, network and finances remain intact?

  That first night, many Americans wanted to hear less from President Bush about prayers and much about the roar or bomber engines. It was a healthy emotion. We have anger and hurt in our gut. We want it to go away, and we know it won't - until we draw enemy blood.

  But wars are not won by drawing blood indiscriminately. A long road with downs as well as ups lies ahead. More should have been done to brace Americans for what we face.

  Many think that we know what to do and how to do it, that we simply lacked willpower in the past. If that were so, we're in good shape, because Tuesday we recovered our will to fight.

  But it will take much more than willpower to prevail. We have to be prepared to try many tactics - some of which will fail. We have to be prepared for retaliations from the terrorists - some of which will succeed. And we have to be prepared for today's consensus about "doing what it takes" to weaken as the road ahead proves bumpier and bloodier than anticipated.

  Here's why. We are not likely to catch bin Laden easily. He is notorious for his ability to move from place to place at a moment's notice. Although we have dubbed him a coward, he is rugged, smart and brave. He has many powerful allies and supporters. He has money.

  His organization, al-Qaeda, operates decentralized cells in trouble spots throughout the world, probably including Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.

  In a sense, we will be fighting world war.

  If we assassinate bin Laden himself, there is every reason to believe that his deputies will take over - with access to the money and the network.

  And even if we succeed in destroying bin Laden's organization, other groups like the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine remain committed to strike at American interests whenever they can.

  If we are serious about preserving our way of life, we need commitment to undoing these groups as well.

  With such a daunting prospect in front of us, some might understandably wish to reconsider appeasement. But it is not an option.

  Bin Laden and other Muslim extremists do not hate us because of what we do or the policies we enact. They hate us because of who we are. Americans. Those who stand tallest and proudest for freedom, modernity, human rights and democracy. Those who stand in the way of the jihad. Those who oppose the extension of the shari'a, the Muslim religious code, over the face of the globe.

  So far, Western nations - and even most non-Western ones - have been quick to declare their support. But if experience is any teacher, this support may dissipate rapidly as the going gets tough.

  Those who call for massive, indiscriminate bombings of civilians in Muslim countries may be Neanderthals. But, make no mistake: This war will involve many thousands of civilian casualties. We must be prepared for some allies to desert us.

  We should try to move with them - but, if necessary, be prepared to go it alone.

  Step one should be to issue an ultimatum to Afghanistan, which we know harbors anti-American terrorists in bin Laden's network and others: Turn over bin Laden and his associates by Day X - or face progressively deadly air attacks on Taliban leadership.

  If they protest that they cannot locate him, they may alternatively - and within a short, strict timeframe - provide our military forces with 100 percent cooperation or again face the consequences. From there, we should move on to the next country that we believe harbors members of his and other networks, offering the same deal. We should attempt to carry out air attacks with as few civilian casualties as possible. But we should expect many such casualties.

  Bin Laden and his associates will continue to strike until we obliterate his ability to do so. We will prevail, not through national timidity or machismo, but through the careful military planning that lies behind all our past victories
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  jelly

  I am not sure what the copywright laws are but I jacked both of these from the NYPost.

  Jelly
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  jelly

  WHAT MUST BE DONE
  
  By JONATHAN FOREMAN
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  September 12, 2001 -- THE massacres yesterday were not a "disaster" -that word suggests something natural or inevitable, and the massive terrorist attack that has changed our world was neither.
  It was something much worse: a bitter defeat, in what is essentially a war.

  And there will be more such defeats with their terrible toll unless we react appropriately.

  This means changing the way we deal with the rest of the world. America must now become the ruthless, far-reaching superpower we are so often caricatured as being.

  This is not just a matter of retaliation, though retaliate and punish we must, and soon. It's also a matter of confronting the failure of those entrusted with the task of protecting us. (This does not just mean the airport security, though they have a lot to answer for.)

  The fact that our intelligence services apparently had no inkling that a terrorist operation of such size and complexity was being prepared is unbelievable - and unforgiveable.

  How could these agencies have possibly missed the movements of people and material to the U.S. from different parts of the Third World, the hiring of trained jet pilots for the hijackings, the vast money transfers that would have been necessary to arrange, multiple, simultaneous attacks on U.S. targets?

  (To be sure, some of those who carried out the hijackings were probably "sleepers" planted in the U.S. years ago, just like the terrorists who planted the World Trade Center Bomb in 1993. But how hard can it be for the FBI not to keep a better eye on immigrants from the relevant Middle Eastern and South Asian countries?)At this point, most informed speculation suggests that this is an Osama Bin Laden operation: Of all our enemies, only he has the necessary resources, skills, manpower and relative invulnerability to attack.

  Yet the CIA and other agencies have spent tens of millions of dollars probing Bin Laden's operations since the African embassy attacks in 1998.

  For years, critics of the Central Intelligence Agency, and to a lesser extent of the NSA and FBI, have warned that they and other agencies have relied on high-tech electronic and signals intelligence, instead of the old-fashioned human kind.

  Instead of sending spies who can speak the languages of terrorism, languages like Arabic, Farsi and Urdu - and the CIA has very, very few operatives from the relevant ethnic backgrounds, especially given the diversity of the U.S. population - they rely, foolishly, on satellites and listening stations.

  In other words, we have plenty of eyes and ears in the sky, but too few down in the streets and tea houses of Baghdad, Damascus, Syria, Iran, Libya, Afhanistan and Pakistan.

  Those intelligence assets we have are too often of poor quality, recruited by a bureaucratic and risk-averse agency whose senior officers seldom have spent enough time in any particular foreign country to develop real expertise.

  To be sure, intelligence gathering of the kind necessary to combat international terrorism is not easy. It requires enormous amounts of time, hard-work, money and expertise. This is particularly true when it comes to the penetration of terrorist groups.

  The Israelis and the British prevented huge bomb attacks by penetrating the organizations of their terrorist enemies. And if the CIA and the other U.S. agencies were at all serious about counter terrorism it would have done the same.They did not make the necessary efforts and we have paid for their dereliction in blood.

  If George Tenet, the current head of the CIA, does not immediately take responsibility for his agency's abject failure to act as our country's shield, and resign, then you have to hope that he will begin a reorganization so thorough as to make it almost unrecognizable.

  Free societies like our own are particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack, and we will suffer further defeats unless we have a foreign intelligence agency worthy of our people - one whose capacities better reflect our resources as a nation. We need an agency that can take the war to our enemies as the Israelis do, tracking down and assassinating their leaders.

  Even more important, our enemies' enemies must be our friends in this struggle, just as they were during the Cold War.That means that we must work with the Indians, whatever the foolishness of their policies in Kashmir. And we must work with the Russians despite the brutality of their war in Chechnya. (Back in the mid '90s the Russians and the Chinese set up an organization called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to deal with Islamist terrorism in central Asia, and we should join it too.)Of course, successive administrations going back to the 1970s have not really taken anti-American terrorism seriously. Men sit in the governments of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Iran who have the blood of Americans on their hand. It seems that our lenity in dealing with them has only made our enemies bolder.

  This does not mean that President Bush should order a few cruise missiles to be launched at rocky outcrops in Afghanistan. Such impotent gestures are arguably worse than doing nothing at all. Even more important none of our forces should be withdrawn from any of their foreign bases: it's all too likely that the removal of U.S. Marines from Jordan after Bin Laden threatened them this summer gave yesterday's perpetrators the encouragement they needed. This is a Pearl Harbor and the war it signals must end the same way, in the destruction of our enemies.