From ERM Collection on Islam

US needs new strategy against terrorists By Henry Kissinger The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington are, above all, a wake-up call. For a decade, the democracies have progressively fallen prey to the illusion that threats from abroad had disappeared, that dangers, if any, had a primarily psychological or sociological origin, that, in a sense, history itself as heretofore recorded had been transformed into a subdivision of economics or of psychiatry. Though we had experienced terrorism, it was generally aimed at American installations abroad; the impact was largely symbolic and stopped well short of threatening lives and civil society in America. The response has usually been condemnation, one or two retaliatory raids and criminal prosecution of such perpetrators as could be foundusually fairly low-level operatives. The current situation dictates a new approach. President George W. Bush has wisely warned that the attacks on New York and Washington amounted to a declaration of war. And, in a war, it is not enough to endure; it is essential to prevail. The attacks on New York and Washington represent a fundamental challenge to American civil society and American securitytranscending even the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the target was not the military capacity of the United States but the morale and way of life of the civilian population. The casualties were innocent men and women on a scale almost certainly exceeding the largely military toll at Pearl Harbor. Above all, the disaster brings home that some of the comfortable premises of the globalized world emphasizing the values of harmony and comparative advantage do not apply to that portion of it that resorts to terrorism. That segment seems motivated by a hatred of Western values so deep that its representatives are prepared to face death and inflict vast suffering on innocents, threatening the destruction of our societies on behalf of what is conceived as a clash of civilizations. As these realities penetrate the consciousness of the democratic world, the terrorists have already lost an important battle. In the United States, they will face a united people determined to eradicate the evil of terrorism at any cost. In the Western alliance, they have ended the debate about whether there is still a common purpose in the post-Cold War world. All Western democracies have recognized that the assault on Americaif unpunished is a prelude to what can happen even more easily to their own societies. An ostrich-like policy would merely enhance their own vulnerabilities. The unprecedented unanimity of NATO in defining the assault on Washington and New York as a common threat and the extraordinary outpouring of popular sympathy for America demonstrate that the shared experiences of nearly two generations have not been forgotten after all and remain relevant.

From ERM Collection on Islam

But other nations outside the NATO framework share as well a common interest not to be subject to blackmail by shadowy terrorist groups using their capacity to inflict suffering for a strategy based on inhumanity and not accountable to any institutional restraints. The challenge then becomes how to translate the common purposes into operational policy. As far as the United States is concerned, there should be an initial sweeping review of intelligence procedures and organization. To what extent has the belief in a period of relative tranquility encouraged a certain lassitude about expectations and have limitations on resources played a role? Is a new organization needed to accommodate countermeasures? Next, retaliatory blows against the perceived resources of this attack are necessary. An outsider can make only a minimal contribution to such an effort except to point out that half-measures are more likely to do harm than good. The most important task, however, is to go beyond retaliation to rooting out the core of terrorism. The war the president has affirmed must be won, not conducted as a tit for tat of exchanging blows. It is therefore imperative to move beyond the existing pattern of retaliation and criminal prosecution to taking the fight to the source of the problem. The terrorist organizations must be put on the defensive; their networks broken up; their source of funds cut off, and, above all, their home bases put under unrelenting pressures to deny them safe havens. For terrorist attacks on the scale of those launched against New York and Washington cannot be improvised. They require organization, substantial funds, technical competence, cells of supporters in the victim country and, above all, a home base to coordinate these activities. Roaming fugitives are not in a position to organize such coordinated and well conceived attacks. It should be the task of America and all those who support what has not become a universal cause to prevent further carnage by getting the terrorist groups on the run and then to destroy them. --AP