By Paul Wolfowitz

By Paul Wolfowitz
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense

On Sept. 11, in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania,
violent extremists killed thousands of citizens of over seventy
countries. Among the dead or still missing are many Muslims and
Arabs. At least one Indonesian lost his life in the attacks.

A week later, the leaders of the world's second and third
largest democracies, President George W. Bush and President
Megawati Soekarnoputri, met to discuss their hopes for peace,
security, and prosperity for our two great nations, and for the
world. While in Washington, President Megawati praised the
principles that our two countries both hold dear - "individual
freedom, openness of society, and strong republican spirit."
These ideals have been the sources of American's strength and of
Indonesia's. Since my time as ambassador in Jakarta, I have
watched these principles develop impressively in Indonesia.

The civilized world is now engaging in a campaign to secure
and defend our common commitment to a decent society. In the
coming weeks and months, the enemies of civilized humanity will
attempt to divide us. They will falsely assert that the United
States is against Islam, ignoring the fact that Islam is the
faith of millions of Americans. They will claim to be defenders
of Islam, falsely suggesting that hundreds of millions of Muslims
share their belief that it is right to deliberately kill innocent
people. Those who purposely kill and maim children, women,
grandfathers and grandmothers have no qualms about lying as to
the motivations of their crimes. I personally know hundreds and
hundreds of Muslims - not only Indonesians but also Arabs, Turks,
Iranians, Pakistanis and many others. I know that the values of
the terrorists are not Muslim values. And President Bush has
been speaking eloquently to the American people about his respect
and admiration for the millions of American Muslims and for Islam
as a religion.

President Bush's appreciation for Islam is shared by the
American people. The United States has frequently come to the
aid of Muslim people, not only with economic and humanitarian
assistance but even with U.S. military forces. Five times in the
last ten years -- in Kuwait, in Northern Iraq, in Somalia, in
Bosnia and in Kosovo, U.S. forces have gone into combat to
protect Muslim people against aggression, ethnic cleansing or
war-induced famine.

As President Bush has said, "The enemy of America is not our
many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy
is a radical network of terrorists and every government that
supports them." The terrorists are a fringe movement whose
immoral extremism has been rejected by Muslim scholars and
clerics. The terrorists kill innocents -- and they blaspheme God
by invoking him in support of their evil actions. The terrorists
trample on Islam's noble principles and dishonor the name of
Islam.

The al-Qaida terrorist network and its supporters have blood
on their hands for the Sept. 11 atrocities and many previous acts
of murder. There are groups of al-Qaida terrorists in over sixty
countries.

They are supported by the Taliban, who have refused to turn
over the terrorists or to shut down their camps. They have
rejected repeated demands by the United Nations and have chosen
to throw in their lot with foreign terrorists.

In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, we see al-Qaida's vision for the
world: millions are starving; women cannot attend school; people
are jailed for owning a television or for having a beard that is
too short. These are the fruits of narrow-minded extremism.
They are the extreme opposite of the traditions of openness and
pluralism that Americans and Indonesians practice and believe in.

The United States has no quarrel with the people of
Afghanistan. On the contrary, we aided the Afghans during their
liberation struggle against the former Soviet Union. Even today,
the United States is the world's largest aid donor to
Afghanistan. Since the early 1990's, we have contributed US$600
million in assistance to Afghanistan. This year alone, we have
already contributed more than $170 million to provide food,
shelter, jobs, and health clinics for the Afghan people and plan
to spend $320 million more -- while the Taliban and the foreign
terrorists who provide them with military support have spent
their resources fighting fellow Afghans and fellow Muslims. We
will support the Afghan people in the future: they deserve peace
and stability and freedom from oppressive tyrants and foreign
terrorists.

This is not just American's fight. All decent people -- all
who believe in peace and respect for innocent life -- have a
stake in ensuring the defeat of terrorism and those who support
it.

(Paul Wolfowitz was sworn in as U.S. Deputy Secretary of
Defense on February 28, 2001. He served as the U.S. Ambassador
to Indonesia during the Reagan administration).