As President George W. Bush told the United Nations General Assembly on September 23rd, terrorists have “brought their war” to the U-N itself. In an August attack on the U-N headquarters in Baghdad, terrorists killed twenty-two people who were working to help the Iraqi people. “The U-N headquarters. . .stood for order and compassion,” said Mr. Bush, “and for that reason, the terrorists decided it must be destroyed”:
“By the victims they choose, and by the means they use, the terrorists have clarified the struggle we are in. Those who target relief workers for death have set themselves against all humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal their contempt for life itself. They have no place in any religious faith; they have no claim on the world’s sympathy; and they should have no friend in this chamber.”
Two years ago, al-Qaida terrorists attacked New York and Washington and murdered more than three-thousand people. Since then, there have been major terrorist attacks in Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Riyadh, Jakarta, and Jerusalem, among other places. These events, said President Bush, “have set before us the clearest of divides”:
“. . .between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.”
“Between these alternatives,” said Mr. Bush, “there is no neutral ground”:
“All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup and recruit and prepare.”
As President Bush told the U-N General Assembly, all nations need to fight terror “as if the lives of their own people depend on it.”
