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Posted on 09/11/2001 7:42:25 PM PDT by Jean S

(September 12) - "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 Franklin 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.

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