The New Evil Empire

[Guest guest]

The New Evil Empire

Jerusalem Post Editorial

Reprinted with permission from the 12 September edition of the

Jerusalem Post

" Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy -

the United States of America was suddenly and

deliberately attacked... No matter how long it may take us to

overcome this premeditated invasion, the American

people in their righteous might will win through to absolute

victory... I ask that the Congress declare that since the

unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a

state of war has existed between the United

States and the Japanese empire. " - US president lin D.

Roosevelt, after the attack on Pearl Harbor

We live today in a different world. As German Chancellor Gerhard

Schroeder has stated, someone has declared war on the United States.

The war against terrorism, however, is a world war as surely as the

war that was fought half a century ago.

As we look with horror at the devastating attacks on the United

States, the hearts of all Israelis are with the American people. Even

we

Israelis, who have been battling a wave of terrorism for almost a

year, have trouble fathoming what has befallen tens of thousands of

innocent people in America.

We are sickened, once again, by scenes of Palestinians dancing in the

streets, this time celebrating the deaths of Americans. We have

trouble fathoming the hatred directed at us, so we can only imagine

the bafflement and pain of Americans attempting to contemplate the

baseless hatred directed at them.

Some Americans, like some Israelis, may be tempted to think about what

they have done wrong, what they might have done to cause

people to take so many lives along with their own. The answer is that

America has been attacked not for what it has done wrong, but for

what it has done right, and for being the hope of the entire world.

Concepts such as good and evil have long gone out of fashion, but we

must relearn how to think in these terms. We have become used to

rounding the corners off everything, so that what used to be a chasm

between good and evil has been whittled down to a matter of opinion.

But the fact that there are people in this world who would crash an

airplane full of innocent people into a building full of innocent

people

should revive the concept of evil.

There is a new " evil empire " - the empire of terror.

When confronting evil, the appropriate emotions are anger and

determination, not understanding and moderation. The terrorists were

evidently thinking as big as they could; the American response should

be no less ambitious.

The United States will obviously seek out the organizations that have

declared war on it and the states that give them moral and material

support. But the world is not a court of law and the United States

cannot limit itself to acting based on a level of proof that may never

be

found.

Rather, the United States should state, as Roosevelt did in 1941, that

as of yesterday's attacks a state of war " has existed " between the

United States and the " evil empire " of state-sponsored terrorism.

In this war, the diplomatic front is at least as crucial as the

military one. The United States, as strange as it may sound, should

take this

opportunity to restore the United Nations to its original purpose.

The highest purpose of the United Nations Charter was to band the

nations of the world together against international aggression. While

that purpose was long ago distorted beyond recognition, it is time to

finally breathe life into it.

The United States should demand that the Security Council use the

strongest measures in its arsenal - mandatory " Chapter 7 " sanctions -

against any nation that supports international terrorism. Making sure

that such sanctions are imposed on known terrorist states may be a

long battle, but fighting this battle will put these nations on the

defensive and provide the appropriate background for military actions

the

United States will have to take. Any nation that opposes the American

effort should be told that its relations with the United States will

be

affected accordingly.

Terrorism is a global scourge that must be fought globally. Until now,

the democracies have fiddled with and indulged the states where

terrorism has been cultivated and grown. America's goal should be, one

way or another, to defeat or remove the regimes that have

declared war against her. If the democracies do not unite to defend

themselves, our world will become as tragically unrecognizable as the

New York skyline.