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The 9/11 Commission Findings: An Accurate Definition of the Enemy

(San Francisco Chronicle) Daniel Pipes - Finally, an official body of the U.S. government has come out and said what needs to be said: that the enemy is "Islamist terrorism...not just 'terrorism,' some generic evil." The 9/11 commission in its final report even declares that Islamist terrorism is the "catastrophic threat" facing the U.S. The great failing in the U.S. war effort since late 2001 has been the reluctance to name the enemy. In contrast to those analysts who wishfully dismiss the Islamists as a few fanatics, the 9/11 commission acknowledges their true importance, noting that bin Laden's message "has attracted active support from thousands of disaffected young Muslims and resonates powerfully with a far larger number who do not actively support his methods." The Islamist outlook represents not a hijacking of Islam, as is often but wrongly claimed; rather it emerges from a "long tradition of extreme intolerance" within Islam, one going back centuries and in recent times associated with Wahhabism. U.S. strategy must be to dismantle al-Qaeda's network and prevail over "the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism." In other words, "the U.S. has to help defeat an ideology, not just a group of people."
2004-07-28 00:00:00
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