Chairman Burton,
Distinguished Representatives,
I want to thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I
feel a profound responsibility addressing you in this hour of peril in the
capital of liberty.
What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of our
civilization. There may be some who would have thought a week ago that to
talk in these apocalyptic terms about the battle against international
terrorism was to engage in reckless exaggeration. No longer.
Each one of us today understands that we are all targets, that our
cities are vulnerable, and that our values are hated with an unmatched
fanaticism that seeks to destroy our societies and our way of life.
I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say -
Today, we are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance.
In grief, because my people have faced the agonizing horrors of terror
for many decades, and we feel an instant kinship with both the victims of
this tragedy and the great nation that mourns its fallen brothers and sisters.
In defiance, because just as my country continues to fight terrorism
in our battle for survival, I know that America will not cower before this
challenge.
I have absolute confidence that if we, the citizens of the free world,
led by President Bush, marshall the enormous reserves of power at our
disposal, harness the steely resolve of a free people, and mobilize our
collective will - we shall eradicate this evil from the face of the earth.
But to achieve this goal, we must first however answer several
questions: Who is responsible for this terrorist onslaught? Why? What is
the motive behind these attacks? And most importantly, what must be done to
defeat these evil forces?
The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no
international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.
International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the
regimes that aid and abet it. Terrorists are not suspended in mid-air.
They train, arm and indoctrinate their killers from within safe havens on
territory provided by terrorist states. Often these regimes provide the
terrorists with intelligence, money and operational assistance, dispatching
them to serve as deadly proxies to wage a hidden war against more powerful
enemies.
These regimes mount a worldwide propaganda campaign to legitimize
terror, besmirching its victims and exculpating its practitioners --- as we
witnessed in the farcical spectacle in Durban last month.
Iran, Libya, and Syria call the US and Israel racist countries that
abuse human rights?
Even Orwell could not have imagined such a world.
Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of
international terrorism will collapse into the dust.
The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes - Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Taleban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and
several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan.
These regimes are the ones that harbor the terrorist groups: Osama Bin
Laden in Afghanistan, Hizballah and others in Syrian-controlled Lebanon,
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized Fatah and Tanzim factions
in the Palestinian territories, and sundry other terror organizations based
in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum.
These terrorist states and terror organizations together form a terror
network, whose constituent parts support each other operationally as well
as politically.
For example, the Palestinian groups cooperate closely with Hezbollah,
which in turn links them to Syria, Iran and Bin Laden.
These offshoots of terror have affiliates in other states that have
not yet uprooted their presence, such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Now, how did this come about? The growth of this terror network is
the result of several developments in the last two decades: Chief among
them is the Khomeini Revolution and the establishment of a clerical Islamic
state in Iran.
This created a sovereign spiritual base for fomenting a strident
Islamic militancy worldwide - a militancy that was often backed by terror.
Equally important was the victory in the Afghan war of the
international mujaheedin brotherhood.
This international band of zealots, whose ranks include Osama Bin
Laden, saw their victory over the Soviet Union as providential proof of the
innate supremacy of faithful Moslems over the weak infidel powers.
They believed that even the superior weapons of a superpower could
not withstand their superior will.
To this should also be added Saddam Hussein's escape from destruction
at the end of the Gulf War, his dismissal of UN monitors, and his growing
confidence that he can soon develop unconventional weapons to match those
of the West.
Finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat's terror enclave gave a safe
haven to militant Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Like their mujaheedin cousins, they drew inspiration from Israel's
hasty withdrawal from Lebanon, glorified as a great Moslem victory by the
Syrian-backed Hizballah.
Under Arafat's rule, these Palestinian Islamic terrorist groups made
repeated use of the technique of suicide bombing, going so far as to run
summer camps in Gaza that teach Palestinian children how to become suicide
martyrs.
Here is what Arafat's government controlled newspaper, Al Hayat Al
Jadida, said on September 11, the very day of the suicide bombing of the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon:
"The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the Lebanese
suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon].
These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history.
They are the most honorable people among us. ".
A simple rule prevails here: The success of terrorists in one part of
the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout the network.
This then is the Who. Now for the Why.
Though its separate parts may have local objectives and take part in
local conflicts, the main motivation driving the terror network is an
anti-Western hostility that seeks to achieve nothing less than a reversal
of history.
It seeks to roll back the West and install an extremist form of Islam
as the dominant power in the world.
It seeks to do this not by means of its own advancement and progress,
but by destroying the enemy. This hatred is the product of a seething
resentment that has simmered for centuries in certain parts of the Arab and
Islamic world.
Most Moslems in the world, including the vast majority of the growing
Moslem communities in the West, are not guided by this interpretation of
history, nor are they moved by its call for a holy war against the West.
But some are. And though their numbers are small compared to the
peaceable majority, they nevertheless constitute a growing hinterland for
this militancy.
Militant Islamists resented the West for pushing back the triumphant
march of Islam into the heart of Europe many centuries ago.
Its adherents, believing in the innate supremacy of Islam, then
suffered a series of shocks when in the last two centuries that same hated,
supposedly inferior West penetrated Islamic realms in North Africa, the
Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
For them the mission was clear: The West had to be first pushed out of
these areas. Pro-western Middle Eastern regimes were toppled in rapid
succession, including in Iran.
And Israel, the Middle East's only democracy and its purest
manifestation of Western progress and freedom, must be wiped off the face
of the earth.
Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of
Israel, they hate Israel because of the West -- because they see it is an
island of Western democratic values in a Moslem-Arab sea of despotism.
That is why they call Israel the Little Satan, to distinguish it
clearly from the country that has always been and will always be the Great
Satan - The United States of America.
Nothing better illustrates this then Osama bin Laden's call for Jihad
against the United States in 1998. He gave as his primary reason not
Israel, not the Palestinians, not the 'peace process', but rather the very
presence of the United States 'occupying the Land of Islam in the holiest
of places' - and where is that? - 'the Arabian peninsula' says Bin Laden,
where America is 'plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, and
humiliating its people'. Israel, by the way, comes a distant third, after
'the continuing aggression against the Iraqi people'. [Al Quds al Arabi -
February 23, 1998]
For the Bin Ladens of the world Israel is merely a sideshow. America
is the target.
But reestablishing a resurgent Islam requires not just rolling back
the West; it requires destroying its main engine, the United States. And if
the US cannot be destroyed just now, it can be first humiliated -- as in
the Teheran hostage crisis two decades ago -- and then ferociously attacked
again and again, until it is brought to its knees.
But the ultimate goal remains the same: Destroy America and win eternity.
Some of you may find it hard to believe that Islamic militants truly
cling to the mad fantasy of destroying America. Make no mistake about it.
They do. And unless they are stopped now, their attacks will continue, and
become even more lethal in the future.
To understand the true dangers of Islamic militancy, we can compare it
to another ideology which sought world domination - communism. Both
movements pursued irrational goals, but the communists at least pursued
theirs in a rational way.
Anytime they had to choose between ideology and their own survival, as
in Cuba or Berlin, they backed off and chose survival.
Not so for the Islamic militants. They pursue an irrational ideology
irrationally - with no apparent regard for human life, neither their own
lives nor the lives of their enemies. The Communists seldom, if ever,
produced suicide bombers, while Islamic militancy produces hordes of them,
glorifying them and promising them that their dastardly deeds will earn
them a glorious afterlife.
This highly pathological aspect of Islamic militancy is what makes it
so deadly for mankind.
When in 1996, I wrote a book about fighting terrorism, I warned about
the militant Islamic groups operating in the West with the support of
foreign powers-- serving as a new breed of "domestic-international"
terrorists, basing themselves in America to wage Jihad against America:
Such groups, I wrote then, nullify in large measure the need to have
air power or intercontinental missiles as delivery systems for an Islamic
nuclear payload. They will be the delivery system. In the worst of such
scenarios, I wrote, the consequences could be not a car bomb but a nuclear
bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center.
Well, they did not use a nuclear bomb. They used two 150 ton fully
fueled jetliners to wipe out the Twin Towers. But does anyone doubt that
given the chance, they will throw atom bombs at America and its allies? And
perhaps long before that, chemical and biological weapons?
This is the greatest danger facing our common future. Some states of
the terror network already possess chemical and biological capabilities,
and some are feverishly developing nuclear weapons. Can one rule out the
possibility that they will be tempted to use such weapons, openly or
through terror proxies, or that their weapons might fall into the hands of
the terrorist groups they harbor?
We have received a wake up call from hell. Now the question is simple:
Do we rally to defeat this evil, while there is still time, or do we press
a collective snooze button and go back to business as usual?
The time for action is now.
Today the terrorists have the will to destroy us, but they do not have
the power. There is no doubt that we have the power to crush them. Now we
must also show that we have the will to do just that.
Once any part of the terror network acquires nuclear weapons, this
equation will fundamentally change, and with it the course of human affairs.
This is the historical imperative that now confronts all of us.
And now the third point: What do we about it?
First, as President Bush said, we must make no distinction between the
terrorists and the states that support them. It is not enough to root out
the terrorists who committed this horrific act of war. We must dismantle
the entire terrorist network.
If any part of it remains intact, it will rebuild itself, and the
specter of terrorism will reemerge and strike again.
Bin Laden, for example, has shuttled over the last decade from Saudi
Arabia to Afghanistan to the Sudan and back again. So we must not
leave any base intact.
To achieve this goal we must first have moral clarity. We must fight
terror wherever and whenever it appears. We must make all states play by
the same rules. We must declare terrorism a crime against humanity, and we
must consider the terrorists enemies of mankind, to be given no quarter and
no consideration for their purported grievances.
If we begin to distinguish between acts of terror, justifying some and
repudiating others based on sympathy with this or that cause, we will lose
the moral clarity that is so essential for victory.
This clarity is what enabled America and Britain to root out piracy in
the nineteenth century. This is how the Allies rooted out Nazism in the
twentieth century.
They did not look for the "root cause" of piracy or the "root cause"
of Nazism - because they knew that some acts are evil in and of themselves,
and do not deserve any consideration or "understanding".
They did not ask if Hitler was right about the alleged wrong done to
Germany at Versailles. That they left to the historians. The leaders of the
Western Alliance said something else: Nothing justifies Nazism. Nothing!
We must be equally clear cut today: Nothing justifies terrorism, Nothing!
Terrorism is defined not by the identity of its perpetrators nor by
the cause they espouse. Rather, it is defined by the nature of the act.
Terrorism is the deliberate attack on innocent civilians. In this it
must be distinguished from legitimate acts of war that target combatants
and may unintentionally harm civilians.
When the British bombed a Gestapo headquarters in 1944, and one of
their bombs unintentionally struck a children's hospital that was a
tragedy, but it was not terrorism.
When Israel fired a missile that killed two Hamas arch-terrorists,
and two Palestinians children who were playing nearby were tragically
struck down, that is not terrorism.
But terrorists do not unintentionally harm civilians. They
deliberately murder, maim, and menace civilians - as many as possible.
No cause, no grievance, no apology can ever justify terrorism.
Terrorism against Americans, Israelis, Spaniards, Britons, Russians, or
anyone else, is all part of the same evil and must be treated as such.
It is time to establish a fixed principle for the international
community: any cause that uses terrorism to advance its aims will not be
rewarded. On the contrary, it will be punished and placed beyond the pale.
Armed with this moral clarity in defining terrorism, we must possess
an equal moral clarity in fighting it.
If we include Iran, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority in the
coalition to fight terror -- even though they currently harbor, sponsor and
dispatch terrorists --- then the alliance against terror will be defeated
from within.
Perhaps we might achieve a short-term objective of destroying one
terrorist fiefdom, but it will preclude the possibility of overall victory.
Such a coalition will melt down because of its own internal contradictions.
We might win a battle. We will certainly lose the war.
These regimes, like all terrorist states, must be given a forthright
demand: Stop terrorism, permanently, or you will face the wrath of the free
world - through harsh and sustained political, economic and military sanctions.
Obviously, some of these regimes will scramble in fear and issue
platitudes about their opposition to terror, just as Arafat, Iran and Syria
did, while they keep their terror apparatus intact. We should not be
fooled. These regimes are already on the US lists of states supporting
terrorism - and if they're not, they should be.
The price of admission for any state into the coalition against
terror must be to first completely dismantle the terrorist infrastructures
within their realm.
Iran will have to dismantle a worldwide network of terrorism and
incitement based in Teheran.
Syria will have to shut down Hizballah and the dozen terrorist
organizations that operate freely in Damascus and in Lebanon. Arafat
will have to crush Hamas and Islamic Jihad, close down their suicide
factories and training grounds, rein in his own Fatah and Tanzim terrorists
and cease the endless incitement to violence.
To win this war, we must fight on many fronts. The most obvious one is
direct military action against the terrorists themselves. Israel's policy
of preemptively striking at those who seek to murder its people is, I
believe, better understood today and requires no further elaboration.
But there is no substitute for the key action that we must take:
Imposing the most punishing diplomatic, economic and military sanction on
all terrorist states;
To this must be added these measures:
Freeze financial assets in the West of terrorist regimes and
organizations;
Revise legislation, subject to periodic renewal, to enable better
surveillance against organizations inciting violence;
Keep convicted terrorist behind bars. Do not negotiate with terrorists;
Train special forces to fight terror.
And Not least important, impose sanctions on suppliers of nuclear
technology to terrorist states.
I've had some experience in pursuing all these courses of action in
Israel's battle against terrorism, and I will be glad to elaborate on any
one of them if you wish, including the sensitive questions surrounding
intelligence.
But I have to be clear: Victory over terrorism is not, at its most
fundamental level, a matter of law enforcement or intelligence. However
important these functions may be, they can only reduce the dangers, not
eliminate them.
The immediate objective is to end all state support for, and
complicity with, terror. If vigorously and continuously challenged, most of
these regimes can be deterred from sponsoring terrorism.
But there is a real possibility that some will not be deterred- and
those may be ones that possess weapons of mass destruction.
Again, we cannot dismiss the possibility that a militant terrorist
state will use its proxies to threaten or launch a nuclear attack with
apparent impunity.
Nor can we completely dismiss the possibility that a militant regime,
like its terrorist proxies, will commit collective suicide for the sake of
its fanatical ideology.
In this case, we might face not thousands of dead, but hundreds of
thousands and possibly millions. This is why the US must do everything in
its power to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq from developing nuclear
weapons, and disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction.
This is the great mission that now stands before the free
world. That mission must not be watered down to allow certain states to
participate in the coalition that is now being organized. Rather, the
coalition must be built around this mission.
It may be that some will shy away from adopting such an uncompromising
stance against terrorism. If some free states choose to remain on the
sidelines, America must be prepared to march forward without them -- for
there is no substitute for moral and strategic clarity.
I believe that if the United States stands on principle, all the
democracies will eventually join the war on terrorism. The easy route may
be tempting, but it will not win the day.
On September eleventh, I, like everyone else, was glued to a
television set watching the savagery that struck America. Yet amid the
smoking ruins of the Twin Towers one could make out the Statue of Liberty
holding high the torch of freedom.
It is freedom's flame that the terrorists sought to extinguish.
But it is that same torch, so proudly held by the United States, that
can lead the free world to crush the forces of terror and secure our tomorrow.
It is within our power. Let us now make sure that it is within our will.
