9/12/01


THE NEW FACE OF TERRORISM

By L. Paul Bremer

L. Paul Bremer, managing director of Kissinger Associates, was ambassador-at-large for counter-terrorism during the Reagan administration.

NEW YORK -- We don't know yet who committed the catastrophic terrorist acts in the United States on Tuesday (Sept. 11). But these acts have all the hallmarks of the new face of terrorism with which we are becoming all too familiar.

In the 1970s and 1980s, anti-American terrorists had raw political goals. Radical European Marxist groups (Action Directe, Red Brigades, Red Army Faction) sought to expel America from Europe and to destroy NATO; Middle Eastern terrorism was mostly conducted by secular Marxists whose objective was to weaken America's ties to Israel, the better to destroy Israel.

These political terror groups were tightly organized, with well-defined command-and-control structures. They were content to attack U.S. targets in Europe or the Middle East because such targets were easier to hit. And blowing up buildings in Frankfurt or Cairo delivered a message clearly related to the groups' political objectives.

Now, we are witnessing the emergence of religio-ideological terrorism similar to the radical Iranian fundamentalism of 1979. To these terrorists America is the Great Satan, the symbol of global capitalist corruption, pornography and drugs. Whereas the secular terrorists of the 1980s hated America for whom we supported, these thugs hate America for what we are. They seek not a shift in American policy but the destruction of American society. To them it is a real Holy War.

(c) 2001, Global Viewpoint. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, a division of Tribune Media Services.
For immediate release (Distributed 9/12/01)