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 espite all the easy talk about a new kind of terrorism, and a
new kind of war, the models for what we have experienced and what we
must do are quite old. The terrorists adopted the methods of the
1940s — kamikazes — with a bit of 1950s brainwashing added to
produce a number of Manchurian Candidates. We dealt with the
original kamikazes by improving our defenses so as to kill them
before they hit us, and by destroying the country that launched
them. We have to do that again.
Unless you have
been gulled by the leaks from the misnamed intelligence community,
you know that the terrorists represent the long arm of evil regimes.
We therefore have a dual task: Kill the terrorists, and destroy the
regimes that provide them with the critical infrastructure —
training, safe havens, travel documents, technology, and all the
rest — they need to operate.
The hunt for
the terrorists is a technical matter, and we must hope that our
military has enough virtue left from the Clinton ravages to do the
job. But we should have no misgivings about our ability to destroy
tyrannies. It is what we do best. It comes naturally to us, for we
are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have
been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle
name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants
hate us, and are driven to attack us.
So we begin
with an enormous advantage. The tyrants fear us, and their oppressed
peoples want what we have to offer: freedom. Yes, there are the
fanatics, both religious and political. But far too much has been
made of the presumed religious fanaticism of our Middle Eastern
enemies. Saddam Hussein is not at all a religious leader. His fame
and charisma rest on his political and military power, and when the
Palestinians dance in the streets, carrying banners with his
portrait, and sing odes to Saddam, it is not because of his Islamic
faith. It is because of his murderous success. He challenged us, he
took our biggest punch and survived, and he now carries the battle
to us once again.
And yet he
fears us, for he knows that his own people would remove him in a
heartbeat if only they could. And the Taliban fear us too, the
Taliban who have slaughtered and enslaved the women of Afghanistan
with a systematic sadism that would make Stalin proud, and would
warm the cockles of the Ayatollah Khomeini's lifeless heart. And the
mullahs and ayatollahs in Tehran fear us, for they know that not one
of them could survive a free election in Iran.
Freedom is our
most lethal weapon, and the oppressed peoples of the fanatic regimes
are our greatest assets. They need to hear and see that we are with
them, and that the Western mission is to set them free, under
leaders who will respect them and preserve their freedom. The
president has brilliantly stressed our respect for Islam, and our
conviction that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people. He
should direct Secretary Powell to fully support democratic
resistance movements in the terrorist countries, and, failing that,
to support more moderate, more pro-Western forces. You cannot remove
a regime without having a new one ready to go.
These forces
exist. In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, despite the
assassination of its historic leader Massoud, is still a force to be
reckoned with, and they have offered us their support in dislodging
the Taliban. And there are others, including the deposed king, still
formally recognized as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan by most
of the civilized world. In Iraq, we have halfheartedly supported an
umbrella organization, the Iraqi National Congress, under the
outstanding leadership of Ahmed Chalabi. Yet the State Department,
as recently as yesterday, was still telling them that they must not,
under any circumstances, operate inside Iraq. That is sheer folly,
for it guarantees that we get the worst of both worlds: We enrage
Saddam even further, but ensure that we won't be able to get close
to his throat. The president should order these embarrassing
restrictions removed, give full support to this democratic
resistance movement, and encourage the downtrodden and long
suffering Iraqi people to join Chalabi and win their
freedom.
In Afghanistan,
as in Iraq, we must not think in the unworthy terms of a mere
military strike against al Qaeda and its phantasmagorical leader,
Osama bin Laden. We want the destruction of the Taliban, without
which bin Laden could not have operated.
In other words,
it is time once again to export the democratic revolution. To those
who say it cannot be done, we need only point to the 1980s, when we
led a global democratic revolution that toppled tyrants from Moscow
to Johannesburg. Then, too, the smart folks said it could not be
done, and they laughed at Ronald Reagan's chutzpah when he said that
the Soviet tyrants were done for, and called on the West to think
hard about the post-Communist era. We destroyed the Soviet Empire,
and then walked away from our great triumph in the Third World War
of the Twentieth Century. As I sadly wrote at that time, when
America abandons its historic mission, our enemies take heart, grow
stronger, and eventually begin to kill us again. And so they have,
forcing us to take up our revolutionary burden, and bring down the
despotic regimes that have made possible the hateful events of the
11th of September.
The only
consolation is that we know how to do it. And, miraculously, we have
some leaders who understand the historic opportunity they hold in
their hands.
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