06/17/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09951

WOLFOWITZ ON ISLAM

The war against global terrorism is not a war between the West and Islam. "It is," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "a war on extremists who are trying to hijack one of the world’s great religions [Islam]."

Six times in the last eleven years –- in Kuwait, northern Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan -- Americans have put their lives at risk to defend people from the ravages of war and war-induced famine. On each occasion, the people the U.S. were defending were predominantly Muslim. As Mr. Wolfowitz said, "We didn’t do it simply to be good guys.... We did it because they were human beings. But they happened, in every case, to be Muslims."

The U.S. is now providing assistance and training to the government of the Philippines, which is facing a terrorist threat from Abu Sayyaf, a violent Islamic separatist group. Abu Sayyaf engages in kidnapping, bombings, assassination, and extortion. Its targets have included churches and foreign civilians. Earlier this month, two people kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf –- a Philippine nurse and an American missionary -- were killed during a rescue attempt by Philippine authorities. A third was freed.

"What the terrorists most aspire to do," said Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, "is to take the world’s billion Muslims back to a twisted, medieval notion of what the proper order of things is." The terrorists want a world in which women are oppressed, religious bigotry and extremism are promoted, and children are indoctrinated to hate. Mr. Wolfowitz said that this is not "a world that most of the world’s Muslims want to live in. And we need to help them, and help ourselves in fighting [the terrorists]."

The September 11^th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., were horrendous acts. But as Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz said, the attacks "have galvanized this country, and galvanized dozens of countries working with us around the world to that threat." The war against global terrorism is complicated and difficult. But it is one that will be fought and won.