A response to anti-war protesters

On Sept. 11, our country was attacked by terrorists intent on killing American citizens and destroying American symbols. In a matter of minutes, over 5,000 human beings were brutally murdered. Some have blamed U.S. actions and policy for provoking these attacks. Specifically, they blame U.S. support of Israel for fueling the terrorists' rage against us. Finally, they assert that retaliation is the wrong response.

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have a simple objective: to fight the Western World and rain terror upon it. It is a natural impulse to be curious about what they want. What could possibly assuage their wrath? From their threats, we can derive the following demands. First, reconstitute America in the image of the Taliban (whose brand of Islam is so fanatical that even Iran has termed it "extremist"). Second, withdraw all forces and influence from the Middle East. Neither of these demands is compatible with American values, and to acquiesce in either of them would be to sacrifice our national identity and security. Of course, Osama bin Laden knows this. Because of this, the demands are irrelevant - to them and to us. Nineteen hijackers did not kill themselves and thousands of other people because President Bush refused to meet with Al-Qaeda officials at a diplomatic luncheon or because the State Department failed to return their phone calls.

Some anti-war advocates blame U.S. support of Israel for antagonizing Al-Qaeda. Just as logically, anti-war protesters during World War II could have pointed to U.S. support of Britain for angering Germany. They could point to the U.S. cutting off oil to Japan as the rightful reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor. After all, how could Imperial Japan hope to realize its national dream of a Co-Prosperity sphere with the U.S. tightening the noose around its vital oil supply? Al-Qaeda is not substantively different from the Nazis and other fascist regimes. Totalitarianism ends up looking the same, no matter who wears the mask. And, just as Germany would have been content only if we had allowed them to conquer Britain, and Japan would have been content only if we had allowed them to conquer East Asia, the terrorist groups will be content only if we stand idly by while they attempt to crush Israel. Groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda have no interest in negotiating a peace settlement. They want the Israelis to either leave or perish, and they will not be content until one of those events occurs. Undoubtedly, Israeli policies are not perfect and mistakes have been made in the past. Most supporters of Israel admit that. However, we cannot abandon one of our most steadfast allies and the only democracy in the Middle East because terrorists oppose its very existence. That is worse than Neville Chamberlain handing over the Sudetenland to Adolph Hitler. At least he was ignorant of Hitler's intentions.

So, we see that we cannot meet either of the terrorist demands - we cannot change our culture and we cannot withdraw from the Middle East. But what justifies retaliation? In just the first week of the attacks, innocent civilians were killed inadvertently. Hasn't enough blood been shed already? Couldn't we, in the words of Professor Howard Zinn, assert ourselves as a "moral" superpower instead of a military superpower?

The answer is clear to anyone who is not blinded by ideology. Representatives of Al-Qaeda have appeared on Al-Jazeera television warning Muslims to keep away from planes and tall buildings, because of the imminence of future attacks on America. Osama bin Laden has asserted that he would gladly use a nuclear weapon on us. The attacks on Afghanistan are not some kind of high-tech revenge, fantasy fulfillment. This is self-defense.

No, this is not American imperialism in action, nor is it a conspiracy, a ploy or a plot. The World Trade Center is not the Gulf of Tonkin, and Osama bin Laden is not a latter day Ho Chi Minh. We are presently faced with a group of people devoted to the idea of killing us. We cannot sit on our hands and offer ourselves up like sacrificial lambs in the name of a kindly, but stupid ideology. Those who advocate non-violence are not traitors and they are not necessarily unpatriotic. However, they are unquestionably wrong.