We must remain firm in face of terror

AUSTRALIA is in mourning. The sense of sorrow mixed with disbelief, outrage and fear that followed the September 11 attacks last year in New York and Washington consumes us again. Except this time terrorism has come to our doorstep, to the holiday home away from home that is Bali.

The tourist destination familiar to most of us as a safe, cheap and friendly island of tolerance and fun has been turned into a charred graveyard. Horrifying images of bodies burned beyond description, seriously injured young men and women, and the street scenes of utter devastation recall a war zone.

What the Indonesians are calling the worst act of terrorism in their country's history is an international tragedy that is especially painful for us. And we are only just beginning to grasp what has happened. Many Australians were in the nightclubs or nearby when they were bombed and casualties will be very high. Women and men from around our large country, scores of them, some of them footballers enjoying an end of season break, are dead or missing. Certainly more Australians have been killed in Bali than in any other international disaster.

Authorities are still counting the cost to human life, and will be doing so for some time. The race is on to save the lives of those injured by the bomb blasts; however, many tourists are unaccounted for. Families and friends are desperately trying to get in touch with loved ones. But it is clear that Australians, along with French, Germans, Swedes, Britons, Americans, Canadians and other foreigners as well as Indonesians have lost their lives. The death toll could rise above 200. Hundreds more have been injured, some of them critically.

The search is on for the murderers who planned this brutal attack. We cannot yet be sure whether Australians were specifically targeted. But we do know this was a terrorist attack that killed and injured mainly foreign tourists. It occurred in a non-Muslim enclave of Indonesia that is a magnet for fun-loving young Western holidaymakers.

Another bomb went off near the US consulate, adding to the sense that this was a co-ordinated attack motivated by the same kind of indiscriminate anti-Western rage that drove the murder-bombers into the World Trade Centre.

Already our own Government, some Indonesian politicians, Bush administration officials and academic experts are making the obvious connections with the same radical Islamic terrorist networks that masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks. As Clive Williams argues in The Australian today, al-Qa'ida-linked terrorist groups are the likely Bali bombers. Jemaah Islamiyah heads the list of suspects.

The sadness is overwhelming, yet we must steel ourselves for the struggle ahead. This is a wake-up call to Australia, to our region, and to the entire civilised world to unite more strongly than ever to defeat terrorism. The Bali bombings expose the lie that the act of war on September 11, 2001, was simply an attack on Americans and American values.

Bali proves that all freedom-loving peoples are at risk from terrorism, at home and abroad. We cannot let national rivalries, domestic political differences or cynical anti-Americanism divide us. The Bali bombings should serve as a lesson to the waverers who have let their distaste for George W. Bush or knee-jerk isolationism blind them to the realities of terrorism.

No one is safe from the terrorist threat. Many have warned since September 11 that terrorism strikes innocent civilians as they go about their ordinary lives. As John Howard said yesterday, the young Australians partying at Kuta Beach's club strip were doing what young Australians will often do at this time of year: "mark the end of the sporting season with some fun in another place". Yet they were seen as legitimate targets of the terrorists.

We must resist the pressure that is already building for Australia to withdraw from its alliance with the US against terrorism, to "protect" ourselves from future attacks. This would be both disloyal and against our national interests. We are involved in a war against terrorism not because we are the US's allies but because we are a Western democratic country.

There is no coward's safety in retreating from what unites us with the Americans, the French, the British, the Canadians and the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims living in Indonesia and other parts of the world. The terrorist threat is widespread and the various fronts cannot be separated. The sickening reality is that al'Qaida has moved from Afghanistan into southeast Asia, and as far as Australia.

It is not an overstatement to say we have entered a new and dangerous phase in the war on terrorism. This is a phase that has necessarily drawn Australia and our region in to the centre of the struggle. The warning signs were coming. Days before the Bali attacks the Americans warned of signals that al-Qa'ida was regrouping.

The attacks on US Marines in Kuwait, the French tanker in Yemen and the release of an Osama bin Laden video, as well as US intelligence, pointed to this fact. Australia and the US had been pressing Indonesia to get tougher on terrorists. Clearly not enough was done.

We need to be ever more determined to root out the terrorist curse. Our anti-terrorist agreement with Indonesia is already in place. President Megawati Sukarnoputri is making the right moves and the Australian Government is drawing the right moral by refusing to back down on its anti-terrorist commitments. One focus of Australia, the US and the region should be to stabilise Indonesia. This event will be catastrophic for the world's most-populous Muslim nation.

The first consequence is economic. Bali is the centre of the nation's tourist industry, and it has remained a steady source of income as Indonesia has battled years of financial and economic instability since the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. Indonesians over the short and long term will pay a heavy price.

However, the Bali bombings will damage the cause of the fundamentalists even more in the eyes of ordinary Indonesians. One positive may be that Ms Megawati will be emboldened and have the political and public support to clamp down once and for all on Islamic extremists within Indonesia linked to terrorism.

The naysayers are using this terrible event to try to talk down Australia's openness to involvement in any military action against Iraq. But we must keep the focus on terrorism and al-Qa'ida. The terrorists in New York and Washington had planes. In Bali they had car bombs. The destruction would be unthinkable if these same terrorists had weapons of mass destruction courtesy of Saddam Hussein. We cannot not lose our nerve. Instead we should continue, and even intensify, our program to eliminate terrorism.

At War With EVIL(Posted By Freeper GaryMontana)

What did we (in America) learn from September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3,000 people. I am tempted to admit: Absolutely nothing.

Among the many unlearned lessons of Day-Which-Will-Live-In-Infamy-II-- the necessity to control our borders, the need for a patriotic renewal and the importance of combating multiculturalism -- the most significant is the nature of Islam. You will note that I do not say militant Islam, or radical Islam, or Islamic extremism or other such weasel words – but Islam, period.

Every one of the hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were professing and practicing Moslems, as is Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda terrorist network, is based in Moslem countries and supported financially by the so called pious Moslem leadership of Saudi Arabia.

The overwhelming majority of Moslem religious authorities who have spoken out on the subject, including those at the main mosque in Mecca and Egypt’s prestigious Al Azar University, either endorse or rationalize acts of terrorism. On a day when Americans were incinerated or buried under tons of rubble, Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia, celebrated in the streets.

Sept. 11 was one chapter in a 1400-year jihad. Every day, the World Trade Center massacre is reenacted on a smaller scale somewhere in the world. Jewish women and children are burned alive in a bus in Israel. A missionary is beheaded in the Philippines, gunmen shoot up a church in Pakistan (deliberately firing into the prostrate bodies of women trying to shield their children). Ancient monasteries and convents are destroyed in Kosovo. Women are sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, Hindus are murdered in the Kashmir. In Denmark, the Muslim community there has put a $30,000 bounty on the heads of Jews and those who support Israel. Nuns are beheaded in Baghdad, Christians in Sudan are forced into slavery, and in Britain, Islam openly states it is going to take over not only the UK, but the whole world -- and the beat goes on.

Genocide in the Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, religious persecution in Saudi Arabia, calls for another holocaust in mosques from Mecca to Gaza, the imposition of Islamic law in Nigeria, forced conversions in Indonesia, synagogues burned in France, Jews attacked across Europe – these are everyday events, as Third World and much of the First slowly turns Islamic green.

Sadly our leaders, from President Bush on down, insist on peddling the absurdity that Islam is a religion of peace – a creed of kindness and benevolence tragically and inexplicably corrupted by fanatics.

Why is the leadership of the West reluctant to confront manifest reality? The reason lies partly with our absurd foreign policy. We have declared certain Moslem nations to be our loyal allies – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. We would not want to offend these dear friends by saying something unflattering about their bloody, butcherly, dark ages faith.

Americans are naturally benevolent. Most of us are taught from childhood that is religion is good (and it does not matter which religion). As long as little Johnny believes in God and goodness, it’s inconsequential whether he lights candles, wears a skull cap to services or prays in the direction of Mecca.

This works with every religion except Islam.

Consider the following: Of the three major western religions: one was started by a lawgiver who helped to free slaves; one by a man of peace; the last one by a man who loved war and having sex with children. Mohammed not only led men into battle, he enjoyed marrying girls as young as six years old (it is in the Koran). The essence of his message is sick and disgusting. A holy war where you slaughter your enemies, while at the same time encouraging followers to have sex with the children they capture (as he did) for the glory of Allah. He even advised his followers to negotiate false peace treaties in order to lull their enemies.

For almost 1,400 years, that has been the reality of Islam. Within a century after the death of Mohammed, Islam spread throughout the Middle East and across North Africa. It overran the Iberian peninsula and was finally stopped in southern France. It spread eastward as far as the southern Philippines. It was not propagated by fresh-faced young men knocking on doors and announcing: “Hello. I’m from your local mosque. Have you considered the Koran?” It was and is spread by force – conversion by the sword or death. This is still in practice today.

Some will respond that all religions go through periods of violence, usually in their infancy. Christianity had its crusades and Inquisition, its forced conversions and expulsions. The evil committed in the name of Christ happened centuries ago. The evil committed in the name of the Prophet is going on now, as you read these words. Of 22 conflicts in the Third World, 20 involve Moslems versus someone else. Coincidence? In his brilliant book, “Clash of Cultures and the Remaking of World Order,” Samuel Huntington speaks of Islam’s “bloody borders.”

There is no Methodist Jihad, no Jewish Hasidic holy warriors, no Buddhist monk wanting to have 72 virgins waiting for him after a suicide bombing, no Hindu Holy men plotting to blow up people, no Southern Baptist suicide bombers, no Mormon elders preaching the annihilation of members of other faiths.

Islam is a warrior religion – the perfect vessel for fanatics, the violence-prone, the envious and haters of all stripes. This is one reason why Islam is making so many converts among the peaceable denizens of our prison system.

Still, much of the West is addicted to a fairy-tale version of Islam. Christian and Jewish clergy fall all over themselves to have interfaith services with imams. Representatives of Moslem groups are invited to the White House. The president signs a Ramadan declaration. In California, public schools ask children to role-play at being Moslems. Our universities take carefully selected verses from the Koran and present them as the essence of the faith. All that’s needed is a Moslem character on “Sesame Street.” Look – it’s the Jihad Monster!

This perspective engenders a fatally false sense of security. Imagine, in 1940, Winston Churchill taking to the airwaves to announce “Nazism is an ideology of peace which, regrettably, has been perverted by a few fanatics like Hitler and Goebbels. But most storm troopers and SS men are fine follows – your friends and neighbors.”

For the first thousand years of its history – from the death of Mohammad to the 17th. century decline of the Ottoman empire, Islam was an expansionist force. For the next 300 years, as the West rose to preeminence, Islam receded. For the past four decades – fueled by Arab oil wealth, a surplus population in the Middle East, the waning of the West and the rise of more virulent strains of the faith (Shiism, Wahhabism, Sunni fundamentalism) – Islam is expanding once more.

Due to Moslem immigration and aggressive proselytizing, Islam is being exported to the West. Moslem populations are burgeoning throughout Western Europe. (In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.) In Judeo-Christian America, Islam is the fastest growing religion. It is also spreading down the coast of West Africa, through the Balkans (after Serbia, Macedonia is the next target) and up from Mindanao in the Philippines.

Wherever it comes, Islam brings its delightful customs – child marriages, female circumcisions, rabid hatred toward Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and every other non-muslim, terrorism and support for terrorism and a virulent intolerance of other faiths.

Am I suggesting we declare war on over 1 billion million Moslems? The question is moot – Islam has declared war on the rest of the human race. When one side knows it’s at war and the other thinks peace and brotherhood prevail, guess who wins?

Ultimately, it is not about Jews in Israel, or Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo, or Hindus in Kashmir, Buddhists in Thailand, or Maronite Catholics in Lebanon, Taoists in China, or Christians in Sudan and Nigeria, but all of us. As Ben Franklin would have it – Either we will hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately.

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