The Bali bomb is a great lesson for all nations

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, United States

One of the messages that I would like to convey is three things. First, the United States understands how important East Asia is; second, we understand that the future security and stability of this region is key to our own security. Third, the U.S. remains committed to promoting East Asian security.

Singapore has played a particularly strong role over the last 10 years in assisting the U.S. in maintaining its presence in this part of the world and sustaining our commitments.

Last year, my message was that terrorism is everybody's problem. In the 12 months since the last (Asia security) conference, that truth was brought tragically home to this region by the brutal attack in Bali.

As with Sept. 11, the lesson of Bali was a lesson for every country. Westerners may have been the immediate targets, but the impacts reverberated throughout Indonesia and Southeast Asia. While the terrorists may regard their attacks as a tactical success, they were a strategic failure. The attack galvanized Indonesian resolve to fight terrorists and strengthened international cooperation to go after terrorists in Indonesia. The Indonesians now understand that the terrorists target them and terrorist actions aim to destabilize their country, hurt their economy and obstruct progress to building democratic institutions.

We are impressed by the professionalism of the Indonesian authorities, and in particular the police, in pursuing the Bali bombers and starting to bring them to justice.

We have made some remarkable progress in the last year, in capturing and killing terrorists and breaking up terrorist networks. More than 3,000 al-Qaeda members have been detained in more than 100 countries. This demonstrates the impressive international cooperation in the global war against terror.

But it is going to be a long, hard fight, as reflected in the recent attacks in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. But the Riyadh bombing may also prove to be a wakeup call, this time for the Saudis. The Saudis are pursuing terrorists in their own country now with unprecedented vigor, and they have freer hand to do so because of our success in Iraq. That success also eliminated the enormous burden that the containment policy had required over the last 12 years -- the burden of sustaining large U.S. forces on Saudi territory engaged in almost daily combat over Iraq.

Saddam Hussein's defeat is a victory in the war on terrorism. It deprives terrorists of sanctuaries, of material and moral support, and of a potential source of weapons of mass terror.

But his defeat presents challenges and opportunities in what could be considered the second front in the war on terrorism, as described by President George W. Bush last year.

There are now two challenges and opportunities in the Muslim world: That of advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the challenge and opportunity of building a new and free Iraq.

This week, President Bush is meeting with leaders of Arab states in Egypt, and then, with Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Jordan. The President hopes to consolidate regional support for the Middle East road map.

The U.S. supports the establishment of a Palestinian state if Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and reject terror. The assistance of the international community is important to strengthen Abu Mazen in his efforts to reform the Palestinian government and to fight terror.

The defeat of Saddam Hussein in 1991 led to two of the most important breakthroughs in the Middle East peace process -- the Madrid conference and the Oslo accords. Like 1991, the defeat of Saddam in 2003 has greatly improved the regional environment.

But the indirect effects of Saddam's defeat may be even more important. It gives Jordan and Saudi Arabia much more maneuver room to support the peace process by removing a source of threat and, in Saudi Arabia's case, removing the burden imposed by 12 years of hosting U.S. forces to contain Iraq.

It reduces the threat to Israel and should give Israel more flexibility to take risks for peace. And most of all, U.S. credibility has been enhanced in ways that should be useful not only with Israel and the Palestinians, but with Arab countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It is important to seize this opportunity to deal with a problem which fuels the sense of grievance that terrorists feed on.

And just as we were committed to getting right his removal, we are equally committed to helping Iraqis establish an Iraq that is whole, free, and at peace with itself and its neighbors. I would just like to make four points about this complex problem.

First, there has been a lot of commentary about the military plan for post-Saddam Iraq. To achieve the extraordinary speed of (U.S. military commander) Gen. Tommy Franks' plan, the choice to go for speed rather than ponderously securing everything as we went along, saved both American and Iraqi lives, and prevented damage to the environment and to local resources.

One should judge the aftermath of the military operations it as much by what did not happen as by what did. There is no food crisis in Iraq; no major epidemics, no refugee crisis. There was no large-scale destruction of oil wells. Other critical infrastructure, such as dams, were not destroyed. Turkish forces did not intervene. There was no large-scale ethnic violence. There was no large-scale urban warfare anywhere. The regime did not use weapons of mass destruction. And no friendly Arab governments were overthrown.

Much of those successes are attributable to the stunning speed with which the attack proceeded. But the speed left some problems that we are now dealing with. Here, we have two enormous strengths:

First, the finest young men and women serving in the military; and, secondly, the support of most Iraqi people. In January we recruited retired Gen. Jay Garner to stand up an Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. This is the first time that we have created an office for post-war administration before a conflict even started.

The magnitude of Garner's efforts goes under-appreciated, in part, because a great part of his energy was focused on preparing to handle large numbers of refugees and to put out extensive oil well fires -- neither of which happened.

Third, security remains the number one priority. One needs to appreciate that a regime that had tens of thousands of thugs and war criminals on its payroll did not disappear overnight. There is a vast difference between what we have come to think of as normal peacekeeping operations, in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, and the situation in Iraq. Progress is being made in bringing order and stability to large parts of the country.

Fourth, I would like to note a very significant success story in the medium sized Iraqi city of Karbala, population of roughly half a million. Its significance far exceeds its size, because it is one of the two holy cities of Shi'a Islam, and it has enormous potential for pointing the direction for society. The success story there provides a useful counter to fears that Iraq's Shia will seek to impose a new tyranny, one based on religion, and provides a hopeful model for the future.

The leadership of this new secular and democratic local government is a religious figure, Shayk Ali Abdal Hassan Kamuna. He is not only a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed and a member of a prominent local tribal clan, but he is also a prominent member of the local secular intelligentsia. The religious intelligentsia is represented by a shayk who endured 12 years in Saddam's prisons for his part in the 1991 Shi'a uprising.

Our victory needs to be based on the kind of country we leave behind. We are committed to an Iraq that is a model for the Middle East, a government that protects citizens' rights, that respects all ethnic and religious groups, and that will help bring Iraq into the international community of peace-seeking nations.

The writer is also a former envoy to Indonesia. The above is a condensed version of his presentation at the Asian Security Conference in Singapore, held from May 30 to June 1. The event was organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.