Ralph Peters:
EUROPEANS insist that the United States overreacted to 9/11. Condescendingly, they observe that they've been dealing with terror ism successfully for three decades, that it can be managed, that life goes on.They're wrong.
What Europeans fail to grasp — what they willfully refuse to face — is that the nature of terrorism has changed.
The alphabet-soup terrorists of the past — the IRA, ETA, PLO, RAF and the rest — were essentially political organizations with political goals. No matter how brutal their actions or unrealistic their hopes, their common intent was to change a system of government, either to gain a people's independence or to force their ideology on society.
The old-school terrorists that Europe survived did not seek death, although they were sometimes willing to die for their causes. None were suicide bombers, although a few committed suicide in prison to make a political statement.
Crucially, their goals were of this earth. All would have preferred to survive to rule in a government that they controlled.
Now we face terrorists who regard death as a promotion — who reject secular ideologies and believe themselves to be instruments of their god's will.
Indeed, they hope to nudge their god along, to convince him through their actions that the final struggle between faith and infidelity is at hand. While they'd like to see certain changes here on earth — the destruction of Israel, of the United States, of the West, of unbelievers and heretics everywhere — their longed-for destination is paradise beyond the grave.
THE new terrorists are vastly more dangerous, more implacable and crueler than the old models. The political terrorists of the 1970s and '80s used bloodshed to gain their goals. Religious terrorists see mass murder as an end in itself, as a purifying act that cleanses the world of infidels. They don't place their bombs for political leverage, but to kill as many innocent human beings as possible.
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It wasn't the United States that didn't "get" 9/11. It was the Europeans, anxious that their comfortable slumber not be disturbed. They insist that terrorism remains a law-enforcement problem, refusing even to consider that we might face a broad, complex, psychotic threat spawned by a failed civilization.
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Europeans are simply in denial. They've lived so well for so long that they don't want the siesta from reality to end. One of the many reasons that continental Europeans reacted so angrily to our liberation of Iraq was that it made it harder than ever for them to sustain their myth of a benign world in which peace could be purchased and the government welfare checks would never stop coming.
America's crime was to acknowledge reality. It will be a long time before Europeans forgive us.
IN many ways, the civilizations of North America and Europe are diverging. Eu rope has a crisis of values behind its failure of will. Their anxiety to tell everyone else what to do reflects their own uncertainty. Corrupt, selfish and cowardly, old Europe has fallen to moral lows not seen since 1945.
The one factor that will finally bring us closer again is terrorism.
In this horrid election year, we've heard endless complaints that Washington needs allies. Of course, we already have many allies. The old-thinkers just mean France and Germany. But the truth is that France and Germany — weak, blind, duplicitous and inept — will need us far more than we could ever need them.
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