2004 — Just Another Year of Fighting Terrorism?

Many have hailed the December 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein a major success. Yet, the man most responsible for this new era of fear is Osama bin Laden — and he is still at large. While there were no attacks on the scale of 9/11 in 2003, terrorists nevertheless struck in Turkey and Indonesia. What are the next steps in the war on terror? Our Read My Lips lays out what is at stake in 2004.

“A new totalitarianism — Islamist terrorism and its inhumane Jihad ideology — pose a threat to peace and stability, both regionally and globally.”

(Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer)

“Globalization has caught the Arab world at a bad demographic moment. Its societies are going through a massive youth bulge. A bulge of restless young men in any country is bad news.”

(Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International)

“These terrorists must be recognized and treated as globalization’s evil offspring who are intent on destruction — not change.”

(Jim Hoagland, Washington Post columnist)

“Terrorist is a more flexible word than communist. It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless — since there will always be some terrorism — as there will always be poverty and cancer.”

(Susan Sontag, author)

“Iraq is a front, Turkey is a front — anywhere the terrorists think they can strike is a front.”

(U.S. President George W. Bush)

“As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11 than it has ever admitted.”

(Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the U.S. federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks)

“Therapy will not work with these kinds of people. Treaties make no sense. There’s only one thing: Get them before they get us, stay on the offensive.”

(President Bush)

“The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear.”

(George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management)

“The ‘with us or against us’ formulation was used by Lenin to attack the social democrats as anti-Bolshevik — and to justify handling them accordingly.”

(Zbigniew Brzezinkski, former U.S. National Security advisor)

“There is no military solution against terrorism. You need to have a political strategy.”

(French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin)

“The transformation of the Middle East is the only guarantee that it will no longer produce ideologies of hatred that lead men to fly airplanes into buildings.”

(Condoleezza Rice, U.S. national security advisor)

“A country’s potential to warrant a U.S. military response is inversely related to its globalization connectivity.”

(Thomas Barnett, military strategist at the U.S. Naval War College)

“The attack in Turkey reminded us that we haven’t completed our job yet.”

(President Bush)