Moderation Is No Virtue Against Terrorism

For a decade, democracies have progressively fallen prey to the illusion that threats from abroad have disappeared, that dangers, if any, were primarily psychological or sociological in origin, that, in a sense, history itself as heretofore recorded has been transformed into a subdivision of economics or psychiatry.

Although we had experienced terrorism, it was generally aimed at U.S. installations abroad; the impact was largely symbolic and stopped well short of threatening lives and civil society in the United States.

The response has usually been condemnation, one or two retaliatory raids and criminal prosecution of such perpetrators as could be found.

The current situation dictates a new approach. President Bush wisely has 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 represent a fundamental challenge to U.S. civil society and security. The target was not our military but the morale and way of life of the civilian population.

Above all, the disaster brings home that some of the comfortable premises of the globalized world 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 America--if unpunished--is a prelude to what can happen even more easily to their own societies.

The shared experiences of nearly two generations have not been forgotten after all and remain relevant.

But other nations outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 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 U.S. 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 tranquillity encouraged a certain lassitude about expectations? To what extent 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. 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. Prevent further carnage by getting the terrorist groups on the run and then destroy them.

It is surely not beyond the scope of the intelligence services of the democracies to identify organizations capable of such global efforts. The number of countries that shelter them is finite enough.

The immediate challenge is to put these countries on notice that they will be outcasts if they continue to extend asylum; that we shall feel free to attack militarily installations that threaten the security of free peoples; that we hold the countries supplying safe havens specifically responsible for attacks launched by organizations with which they have cooperated. Specifically:

* The U.S. should demand the extradition from Afghanistan of Osama bin Laden or his expulsion from Afghan territory. Whether his group has been involved in the attacks on New York and Washington, he has been implicated in other attacks on American property and lives. If Afghanistan refuses, we should feel free to attack Bin Laden’s installations or any Afghan installations capable of supporting him. If he is expelled, any government that gives him shelter should be informed of America’s determination to take military measures in pursuit of him, against his organization and the supporting facilities of the host country.

* A list of terrorist groups should be published. Governments should be warned that any country affording them safe havens will face a complete, strictly enforced, economic boycott; a denial of U.S. (and hopefully allied) visas to its citizens; a denial of U.S. financial facilities to its citizens; the risk of military measures against the terrorist headquarters and supporting host country facilities. All countries should be warned that encouragement of terrorism by state-supported media will be treated as an unfriendly act.

America and its allies must take care not to present this new policy as a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam. The battle is against a radical minority that disgraces the humane aspects Islam has displayed in its great periods.

Then there is the argument that America should modify its foreign policy to remove the resentments that produce terrorism.

Of course U.S. policy should be under constant review. And good relations with the Islamic nations must be one of its principal components.

However, moderation is a virtue only in those known to have an alternative. It is not in the interest of even the moderate Islamic nations that U.S.--or Western--policy is perceived as cowering before the threat or actuality of terror. For the first victims of such a course would be the moderates in the Islamic world and, in the long run, all the populations of the democracies.

Having overcome the vast military and ideological threats of the last half a century, we must now master this more indirect but perhaps even more insidious peril and turn it into an equally decisive victory.