PD: Terrorists was Re: [CS-FSLUG] PD: REVIEW & OUTLOOK

[Josiah Ritchie]

That's a stunning article. Do you have a source for it that I can use to
substantiate it's claim of authorship?

JSR/

On Thu, 2004-08-19 at 11:52, Nigel Ridley wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 08:38:13 -0400
> Josiah Ritchie <jritchie at bible.edu> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 21:58, listmail at rotundus.com wrote:
> > > Quoting Josiah Ritchie <jritchie at bible.edu>:
> > > 
> [snip]
> > > 
> > > The problem is that terrorist organizations tend to be
> > > decentralized, and therefore extremely difficult to eliminate. 
> > > Chances are that by bombing a place, you'll tend to upset a sizable
> > > component of the population, and therefore lead to more people
> > > becoming terrorists.
> > 
> > Well, now that we started bombing them they've decentralized. 
> > Consequently, we haven't been bombing them much lately, at least that
> > I've heard of, and we've moved to more directed attacks and
> > intelligence gathering. Now they've been bombing us... and their own
> > people while they are at it.
> > 
> > JSR/
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > ChristianSource FSLUG mailing list
> > Christiansource at ofb.biz
> > http://cs.uninetsolutions.com
> > 
> > 
> 
> This is quite long but a very good read to understand the overall
> situation:
> 
> Subject: Fw: Turning the tide of terror
> 
> 
> This is very good and worthwhile reading.
> 
>   HAIM HARARI, is a theoretical physicist, the Chair, Davidson Institute
> of Science Education, and Former President (from 1988 to 2001), of the
> Weizmann Institute of Science.
> 
>   During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous
> new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one
> Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its
> current tenured Professors and became one of the highest royalty-earning
> academic organizations in the world.
> 
>    Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
> three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international
> scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science
> Administration and Policy Making.
> 
>    Below is the text of a talk delivered by Haim Harari to a meeting of
> the international advisory board of a large multi-national corporation
> in April, 2004.
> 
>     
> 
>   A View from the Eye of the Storm
> 
>   Haim Harari, April, 2004
> 
> 
>   As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
> "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
> suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of
> the world from which I come.  I have never been and I will never be a
> Government official and I have no privileged information.  My
> perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the
> fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years.  You
> may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you
> are supposed to question, when you visit a country.
> 
>    I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal
> thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict.  However, I will touch upon it
> only in passing.  I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader
> picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the
> entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab,
> predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant
> non-Moslem minorities.
> 
>    Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? 
> Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you
> might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has
> never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.  Yes, there
> is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main
> show is.
> 
>    The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with
> Israel.  The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab
> Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to
> do with Israel.  The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of
> hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have
> nothing to do with Israel.  Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait,
> endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel.
> 
>    Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of
> Israel.  Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own
> citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.  The
> Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do
> with Israel.  The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to
> do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
> 
>    The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
> dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even
> if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine
> would have existed for 100 years.  The 22 member countries of the Arab
> league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 
> 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before
> its expansion.  They have a land area larger than either the US or all
> of Europe.  These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural
> resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus
> Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.  Within this
> meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too
> many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by
> being corrupt rulers.  The social status of women is far below what it
> was in the Western World 150 years ago.  Human rights are below any
> reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was
> elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.  According to a report
> prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the
> auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab
> world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.  The
> total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less
> than that of 6 million Israelis.  Birth rates in the region are very
> high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. 
> And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was
> believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area,
> which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced
> cultures in the world.
> 
>    It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground
> for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide
> murders and general decline.  It is also a fact that almost everybody in
> the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on
> Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and
> anything, except themselves.
> 
>    Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
> failings of his enemies?  On the contrary, I firmly believe that the
> world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would
> have been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different.
> 
>    I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good
> people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew
> up in Moslem families.  They are double victims of an outside world,
> which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which
> breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional.  The problem is that
> the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and
> of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it.  They become
> accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders,
> intellectuals, business people and many others.  Many of them can
> certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
> 
>    The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which
> have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present
> upheaval in the region.  These are the four main pillars of the current
> World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the
> undeclared World War III".  I have no better name for the present
> situation.  A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that
> it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
> 
>   * The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a
> new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this
> expression, only lately.  Even after September 11, it seems that most of
> the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very
> potent psychological weapon.  Its real direct impact is relatively
> minor.  The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders
> within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to
> car accidents.  September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than
> many earthquakes.  More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than
> all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide
> murderers since that conflict started.  Saddam killed every month more
> people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition
> occupation of Iraq.
> 
>   So what is all the fuss about suicide killings?  It creates headlines.
>  It is spectacular.  It is frightening.  It is a very cruel death with
> bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the
> wounded.  It is always shown on television in great detail.  One such
> murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the
> tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and
> in Turkey.
> 
>    But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and
> no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide
> murderer.  This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western
> World.  The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense
> against the last murder, not the next one.  We may arrange for the best
> airport security in the world.  But if you want to murder by suicide,
> you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill
> many people.  Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the
> crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector?  How
> about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period?
> 
>    Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the
> terrorists will get the buses.  Protect the buses and they will explode
> in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools
> and hospitals.  Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will
> always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line
> will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves.  You
> can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive
> measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and
> definitely not win the war in a defensive way.  And it is a war!
> 
>    What is behind the suicide murders?  Money, power and cold-blooded
> murderous incitement, nothing else.  It has nothing to do with true
> fanatic religious beliefs.  No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself
> up.  No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown
> himself up.  No relative of anyone influential has done it.  Wouldn't
> you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk
> their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious
> fervor?  Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? 
> Instead, they send outcast women, naive children, retarded people and
> young incited hotheads.  They promise them the delights, mostly sexual,
> of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme
> act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
> 
>    Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. 
> The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa.  It never happens
> there.
> 
>    There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different
> cultures, countries and continents.  Desperation does not provide anyone
> with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation.  There was certainly
> more despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one
> exploded himself.  A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon
> of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to
> human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very
>   high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for
> power.
> 
>    The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the
> only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas:
> the offensive way.  Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial
> that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach
> the top of the crime pyramid.  You cannot eliminate organized crime by
> arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after
> the head of the "Family".
> 
>    If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are
> afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a
> miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism. 
> The United States understands this now, after September 11.  Russia is
> beginning to understand it.  Turkey understands it well.  I am very much
> afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it.  Unfortunately,
> it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders will
> arrive in Europe in a big way.  In my humble opinion, this will
> definitely happen.
> 
>    The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning.
> The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely
> indispensable.  Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.
> 
>    
> 
>   *The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies.
> 
>   Words can be lethal.  They kill people.  It is often said that
> politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must
> sometimes lie, as part of their professional life.  But the norms of
> politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of
> incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have
> reached new heights in the region we are talking about.  An incredible
> number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never
> happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.
> 
>    You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said
> al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already
> inside Baghdad.  Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. 
> But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements,
> known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own
> milieu, can only happen in this region.  Mr. Sahaf eventually became a
> popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly  
> respectable newspapers from giving him equal time.  It also does not
> prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to
> similar liars.  After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are
> subtle ways of doing it.  You do not have to claim that the holocaust
> never happened and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed.
> 
>    But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the
> case.
> 
>    When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media
> report them as if they could be true.
> 
>   It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and
> dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of
> western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly
> believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making
> opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest
> of the world.  Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of
> mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort
> and want to destroy everything.  Little children are raised on deep
> hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World
> does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap
> operas and game shows.
> 
>    I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic,
> to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time.  You will not believe your own
> eyes.
> 
>    But words also work in other ways, more subtle.  A demonstration in
> Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring
> three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the
> press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration".  You may
> support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat
> or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much.
> 
>    A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes
> families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent
> tables and pays the bill.  She then blows herself up, killing 20 people,
> including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the
> restaurant.  She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and
> "activist" by the European press.  Dignitaries condemn the act but visit
> her bereaved family and the money flows.
> 
>    There is a new game in town.  The actual murderer is called "the
> military wing" - the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now
> called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the
> "spiritual leader".  There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian
> nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by
> Western media.  These words are much more dangerous than many people
> realize.  They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities.
> 
>    It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough,
> people will believe it.  He is now being outperformed by his successors.
> 
>   *The third aspect is money.  Huge amounts of money, which could have
> solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are
> channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder.  In
> the inner circle are the terrorists themselves.  The money funds their
> travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable
> targets.  They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct
> supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, 
>   usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror
> infrastructure.
> 
>    Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational
> and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry
> and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred,
> lies and ignorance.  This circle operates mostly through mosques, madras
> and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic
> and printed media.  It is this circle that makes sure that women remain
> inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside
> world is minimal.  It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming
> everybody outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region.
> 
>    Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes
> sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of
> terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of
> this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or
> blackmail by, the inner circles.  The horrifying added factor is the
> high birth rate.  Half of the population of the Arab world is under the
> age of  20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more
> generations of blind hatred.
> 
>   Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarily
> financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by
> Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes.  These
> states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the
> murder vendors.  The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia,
> but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United
> States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of Europeans to
> various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goals
> may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of outer
> circle.  The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of terror,
> when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle.  The Saudis
> are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, still
> financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
> 
>    Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on
> their loot.  You meet their children in the best private schools in
> Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers.  The Jihad
> "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while
> some of their leaders ski in Switzerland.  Mrs. Arafat, who lives in
> Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands dollars per month
> from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical local
> ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a
> cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at
> the retail level.
> 
>    *The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total
> breaking of all laws.  The civilized world believes in democracy, the
> rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and
> free press, among other liberties.  There are naive old-fashioned habits
> such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and
> hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and
> not using children as human shields or human bombs.  Never in history,
> not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of
> the above as we observe now.  Every student of political science debates
> how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic
> election and abolishing democracy.
> 
>    Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations.  Can
> a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him?  Can a government
> listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers?  Does free
> speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater?  Should
> there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders?  These are the
> old-fashioned dilemmas.  But now we have an entire new set.
> 
>    Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage?
>  Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital?  Do you storm
> a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages?  Do you
> search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to
> reach their targets?  Do you strip every woman because one pretended to
> be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly?  Do you shoot back
> at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of
> children?  Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental
> hospital?  Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one
> location to another, always surrounded by children?  All of these happen
> daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas.  What do you do?  Well, you
> do not want to face the dilemma.  But it cannot be avoided.
> 
>   Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in
> a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and
> financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in
> France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility
> for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the
> same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his
> acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and
> treat him as a great dignitary.  I leave it to you as homework to figure
> out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.
> 
>    The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions
> about  the rule of law in a totally lawless environment.  It is trying
> to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to
> knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player.  In the same way that
> no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister,
> because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address
> killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being
> protected by their Government or society.  International law does not
> know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands
> behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he
> is sheltered by a Government.  International law does not know how to
> deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by
> a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too
> weak to arrest him.  The amazing thing is that all of these crooks
> demand protection under international law and define all those who
> attack them as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the
> allegations.  The good news is that all of this is temporary, because
> the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality.
>  The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the
> murder, not during and not after.  After every world war, the rules of
> international law have changed and the same will happen after the
> present one.  But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
> 
>    The picture I described here is not pretty.  What can we do about it?
> 
> 
> 
>   In the short run, only fight and win.  In the long run?  Only educate
> the next generation and open it to the world.  The inner circles can and
> must be destroyed by force.  The outer circle cannot be eliminated by
> force.
> 
>    Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power
> to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible
> and access to Western media, internet and the international scene. 
> Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the
> civilized world against all three circles of evil.
> 
>    Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi
> driver and return to science.  When you have a malignant tumor, you may
> remove the tumor itself surgically.  You may also starve it by
> preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body,
> thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor.  If you want
> to be sure, it is best to do both.
> 
>    But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to
> realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more
> years.  In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the
> terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a
> safe haven for these people.  I do not want to comment here on whether
> the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of
> weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can
> look at the post-war map of Western Asia.  Now that Afghanistan, Iraq
> and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria
> and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony.  Perhaps Sudan should be
> added to the list.  As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq,
> both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly
> to them.  Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and
> the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union.  Syria is surrounded by
> Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel.  This is a significant strategic change
> and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries.  It is not
> surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising
> in Iraq.  I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle
> both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
> 
>    In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is
> Iran and its regime.  It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and
> to expand in all directions.  It has an ideology, which claims supremacy
> over Western culture.  It is ruthless.  It has proven that it can
> execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using
> Iranian Embassies.  It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. 
> Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso
> version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game.  Iran sponsors Syrian
> terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is
> fully funding the   Hizbulla and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and
> Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in
> South America and probably also in Uzbekhistan and Saudi Arabia and it
> truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor
> players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. 
> Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to
> appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.
> 
>    In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial
> resources of the terror conglomerate.  It is pointless to try to
> understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida
> and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranian
> inspired enterprises.  When it serves their business needs, all of them
> collaborate beautifully.
> 
>    It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer
> circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror.  It is important
> to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic
> organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief
> organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small
> sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism.  It is
> also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and
> fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it
> out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
> 
>   Above all, never surrender to terror.  No one will ever know whether
> the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if
> not for the train bombings a few days earlier.  But it really does not
> matter.  What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused
> the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq.  The Spanish
> story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European
> countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and
> forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq.  In the
> long run, Spain itself will pay even more.
> 
>   Is the solution a democratic Arab world?  If by democracy we mean free
> elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial
> system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,
> exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial
> incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior
> regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy
> is the solution.  If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that
> the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and
> fabrications are the most inflammatory.  We have seen it already in
> Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey.  It will happen again, if
> the ground is not prepared very carefully.  On the other hand, a certain
> transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution,
> paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an
> immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have
> worked in China.
> 
>   I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail.  But the longer
> it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly
> and painful the victory will be.  Europe, more than any other region, is
> the key.  Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of
> World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before
> the tide will turn.
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> Nigel
-- 
Josiah Ritchie
Network Administrator
Washington Bible College
Capital Bible Seminary