To prevail in this fight, we must understand the nature of the enemy. As Israelis have seen so many times, and as America experienced on September 11, 2001, the terrorist enemy is brutal and heartless. This enemy wears no uniform, has no regard for the rules of warfare, and is unconstrained by any standard of decency or morality. We are dealing with enemies who plot and plan in secret, then attempt to slip into a country, blend in among the innocent, and kill without mercy.
This enemy has a set of beliefs, and we saw the expression of those beliefs in the rule of the Taliban. They seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to a narrow, hateful ideology.
This enemy also has a set of clear objectives. The terrorists want to end all American and Western influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that region is to seize control of a country, so they have a base from which to launch attacks and wage war against governments that do not meet their demands.
They have made clear, as well, their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons; to destroy Israel; to intimidate all Western countries; and to cause mass death here in the United States.
Over the last several decades, Americans have seen how the terrorists pursue their objectives. Simply stated, they would hit us, but we would not hit back hard enough. In Beirut in 1983, terrorists killed 241 Americans, and afterward U.S. forces withdrew from Beirut. In 1993 we had the killing of American soldiers in Mogadishu, and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Then came the attack on the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995; the killings at Khobar Towers in 1996; the attack on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and, of course, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
With each attack, the terrorists grew more confident in believing they could strike America without paying a price – and indeed, believing that if they killed enough Americans, they could change American policy.
So they continued to wage those attacks – making the world less safe and eventually striking the Unied States in our homeland on September 11. And we’ve seen the work of terrorists in many attacks since 9/11 – in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Casablanca, Istanbul, Karachi, Mombassa, Bali, Jakarta, Najaf, Baghdad, London and Madrid. The terrorists have declared war on the civilized world. And America will lead the civilized world to victory.
