In for the grim long haul
All eyes are on Iraq with its newly minted interim government. Suicide bombers will still try to visit civil war on what might become a civil society, but the new leaders have a chance to give voice to those who seek a truly progressive society. This is their testing time. The silent majority of Muslims must now impose their will, or their country will be doomed by the malignancy of radical Islamic terrorism. Unless they see who their real enemy is, nobody will be able to save Iraq. George Tenet is no longer at the CIA, but we should mark well his words that the "steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement, and the broad dissemination of al Qaeda's destructive expertise, ensure that this serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future--with or without al Qaeda in the picture."
The evidence is plain to see. Since 9/11, there have been major terrorist attacks in Indonesia, Spain, Bosnia, India, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Somalia, Chechnya, and, of course, Israel. Wherever there is violence, there are Muslim radicals. Last year saw more suicide attacks, 98, than any other year; this year there will be more.
Murder. The modern use of bodies as weapons in the name of religion began in the Muslim world during the Iran-Iraq war when the mullahs of Iran sent children into battle zones to clear mines. The tactic was transformed into suicide bombing by Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported Shiite fighters in southern Lebanon, notably in the truck bomb that demolished the U.S. Marine barracks in 1983 and killed 241 Americans. Suicide bombing came to Israel in 1993, then moved around the world, eroding the trust necessary for ordinary people to leave civilized lives, so that taking commuter trains in Madrid, planes in Washington, and buses in Jerusalem now confronts us as cause for dread.
We still don't know how to defeat people who believe that it is more important to kill their enemies than to live and where the religious mission is a version of Islam asserting that martyrdom pleases Allah and brings honor to the martyr's family. It is a war on western culture by people radicalized by a new breed of fanatical Islamic preachers. They spread their religious gunpowder through satellite TV channels, their hate-filled sermons often delivered from the safety of western cities. Many Muslims abhor the label of "Islamic terrorism" attached to the mass murders, maintaining that Islam is fundamentally a religion of peace. But, as the Economist pointed out, Arab nations cannot explain away that Islam is the core reason the terrorists give for their killing. Murder is their religion. In Saudi Arabia last month, al Qaeda killers targeted any non-Muslim; in Iraq, every day, the murder of Muslims is a matter of routine.
Many Muslims argue that Islam is a solution, but surely it is also the problem. Democracy is based on the idea that men make laws. Islam is based on the laws of the Koran, a set of laws dictated directly from Mohammed and, therefore, not open to revision by man.
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