Unfortunately, September 11 proved us right, much earlier than we thought.. Their strike to the World Trade Towers and to the Pentagon was much more ingenious and forceful than we thought them capable of delivering. Consequently, Islamic fundamentalism has to be taken considerably more seriously than it is been taken.

We all have seen over and over again the videos showing the crumbling of the gigantic towers, the people who jumped from the top floors, preferring an instantaneous crushing death to a death by burning, the evaporation of everything and everybody to a thick gray smoke that spread all over South Manhattan, and the endless grieving of the people who lost their loved ones in that catastrophe. Although the culprits of this shameful attack had been perished in this attack, they were the tip of the iceberg. It was significant that 16 of the highjackers were Saudi Arabs, the rest Egyptians and others. Not a single Iraqi or Iranian. Their act was distilled, unadulterated evil.

During the past year the mountainous debris in the so-called "Ground Zero" has been cleaned and the Pentagon has been rebuilt.

Surely, the organization that prepared this attack should not be allowed to get away with it. It should also not be allowed to continue to exist to do us more harm. So President Bush said that we are now at war against "Terror". But terrorism is just a chosen method of Radical Islam, so we should call a spade a spade and aim our efforts at the real target: the Radical Islam!. At the beginning that was the case. The United States pursued the "Alqaida" organization run by the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden. Many of those were caught in Afghanistan and either killed or taken prisoner. But in spite of very elaborate search , even of caves, Osama bin Laden himself was not found.

The 19 hijackers of September 11 and all the Alqaida prisoners were driven by a pernicious hatred of the United States and Israel. Unfortunately that feeling is spread in the Islamic states much wider. We must understand why they hate us and adjust our war strategy accordingly. I have written quite a bit on that subject in the past year. I do not want to repeat it here. Unfortunately, the United States government has no longer enough time to face that danger. President Bush has changed his focus and is now obsessed by the desire to unseat Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Iraq is the most secular of all Arab states. The president's reasons for preparing an attack on Iraq is that Iraq is believed to develop weapons of mass destruction , including nuclear weapons. He wants to destroy all these developments before they are used against us. Thus, he perceives the Iraq danger as more pressing than the radical Islamic danger. On this he has not yet convinced the majority of people, here and abroad.

I have no reason to doubt the reasons given by the U.S. government on the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. So if that attack on Iraq really takes place, it is going to use a major portion of the military and financial capacity of this country for quite a long time and consequently the war against Radical Islam will be put to the back burner. It is possible that, because of that, Radical Islam might get stronger and more dangerous during this time..

It now appears that this double danger will require the cooperation of the entire Western Civilization to defeat. Our political leaders should do a better job of selling to our allies and friends the absolute necessity of helping us combating this double danger. If they still have some doubt about the danger of Iraq, they should at least take over the pursuit of the Radical Islam while the United States will be busy with Iraq. After all Radical Islam is not out to destroy just Israel and the United States, but the entire Western civilization, and of course, that includes secular Turkey.