(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - Sept. 11 amounts to World War III - the third great totalitarian challenge to open societies in the last 100 years. 9/11 was about religious totalitarians, Islamists, using suicide bombing to try to impose the reign of the perfect faith, political Islam. At the end of the day, the Soviets loved life more than they hated us. With the Islamist militant groups, we face people who hate us more than they love life. When you have large numbers of people ready to commit suicide by making themselves into human bombs, you create a weapon that poses a much more serious threat than the Soviet Red Army. So we must improve our intelligence to deter and capture terrorists before they act, and find ways to get the societies where these Islamists come from to deter them first.
2004-01-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive