Author: Robert D. Blackwill
Publictaion: Hindustan Times
Date: September 24, 2001
(Blackwill is U.S. Ambassador to
India)
Few people will ever forget where
they were or what they were doing when they first heard the news on September
11 of the horrible and unprovoked attacks on Americans and others in New
York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The world watched aghast and dumbstruck
as a few violent and hate-filled men took more American lives than occurred
at Pearl Harbour, or, perhaps, even during the D-day landings in Europe
on June 6, 1944. America,s profound shock has given way to a new resolve
in my country to defend our nation and our values. As President George
W. Bush has indicated, we will do so. "War has been declared on us," he
said.
India has long suffered from terrorising
attacks on innocent civilians. So has the United States. In the last 20
years, Americans have suffered at the hands of foreign terrorists in the
marine barracks in Beirut, in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, on Pan-AM
103 in the skies over Scotland, in the streets of Athens, on the deck of
Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean, in the first attack on the World Trade
Center, and on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We have sadly also
felt the cold horror of the terrorist,s hand from one of our own in Oklahoma
City.
Like most other nations, the United
States treated these previous attacks on its citizens as an internal matter.
That type of limited response is no longer adequate. No citizen of the
world can feel as safe now as he or she did before the attack. The threat
of terrorism knows no borders. Citizens of 80 nations so far are known
to be lost in last week,s attacks. Terrorists have murdered innocent people
and there is a rising tide of fear in the world that threatens not only
public safety, but also the very foundations of civil society. It is time
for freedom-loving nations to decide, to choose and to act.
This is one of those rare moments
in history that changes the way people think. It has produced a new consensus
for action, an unprecedented willingness to confront a long poisonous threat
to the peace of the world. At this hour of sorrow in the United States,
the spirit of the American people has been buoyed not only by the outpouring
of empathy from ordinary citizens all over the world ~ including many of
the Islamic faith ~ but also by concrete gestures of support from many
governments and regional and international organisations.
Just in the few days since the attack,
as Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated, the US has received encouraging
support from the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the Organisation
of Islamic States, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) and many other groups. On September 12, NATO invoked Article 5 of
its charter that says an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all
NATO countries. We hope this is the beginning of a worldwide commitment
to fighting terrorists no matter whom they target, no matter what cause
they profess, no matter where they hide.
My government is moving aggressively
and with deliberate speed to assemble a new international coalition against
terrorism not only to punish those responsible ~ and those who harbour
them ~ for the carnage wrought in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania,
but also those involved in planning and coordinating future acts of terrorism.
The resolve of the United States
to address terrorism is not only a response to the killing of almost 7,000
Americans. As precious as the lives of the lost were to their families,
as enraged as our nation was at the sight of the slaughter of innocents
broadcast live on television ~ we know other nations have suffered in the
same way.
The resolve of the Unites States
rises from the rubble of the World Trade Center because today's terrorists
do not simply want to kill individual Americans; they want to kill democratic
societies like those in India and the United States. A few minutes after
President Bush gave his speech to the American nation on September 20,
Home Minister L.K. Advani telephoned me at Roosevelt House. We discussed
the speech and agreed that the US and India are in this struggle together
because to fight against terrorism is to defend everything that democracies
treasure. I had a similar conversation with Foreign and Defence Minister
Jaswant Singh in his office later that morning.
Let no one doubt the difficulty
of the task ahead and how long it will take. This will be a war that will
not be won in weeks or months. It will be a long, difficult struggle ~
year in and year out. Our objective is total victory ~ to vanquish all
those willing to take innocent lives for extremist ideology. Terrorists
have long threatened the body politic, but in this era of modern communications
and weapons of mass destruction they pose a new and frightening peril that
must no longer be minimised or ignored.
In this effort, the United States
asks for the support of all governments of goodwill from all corners of
the planet. On September 15, President Bush telephoned Prime Minister Vajpayee
to express America,s gratitude for India,s offer of assistance. Most of
all, we ask for the support of ordinary men and women everywhere. In the
short space of a few minutes on a radiant autumn day two weeks ago, the
lives of thousands of innocent people were ended. As a tribute to those
who lost their lives, we ask you to join with us to end this abomination.
(The writer is US Ambassador to
India.)
