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).