'Kamikaze' style

'Kamikaze' style

From Koran Tempo

I think that the kamikaze style (the Japanese suicide flight style) adopted when two airplanes rammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York last week had the smell of Osama bin Laden's method.

Osama might have hired his fanatical, suicide-ready followers for this attack and did not make any demands such as the release of detainees, freedom and so on. The attack on icons of the United States (U.S.) power was spectacularly carried out to inflict the largest possible losses on the U.S. The same attack was also carried out on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the U.S. military base in Dahran (Saudi Arabia) and the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

If it is true that Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind this action, Tuesday's attack has been the most spectacular blow ever dealt the U.S. to date, in the very center of America.

We fear that the American people will indiscriminately associate Osama bin Laden's extremist group with Arabs or Muslims, just as they did towards the Japanese in World War II. Obviously, this attitude will disrupt the peaceful lives of Arabian and Muslim communities in the U.S.

Hopefully, here in Indonesia, Arabs will not be associated with Islam in the same way as otherwise we will be carried away by the wrong perception.

KARTONO MOHAMAD

Jakarta