Zack Lieberberg

Russian people are incredibly rude. They are so rude that even when they make an effort to be polite, they sound threatening. And when they want to sound threatening, it comes out perfectly believable. When Prime Minister Putin, his face still burning after the heavy slap he had received at Beslan, announced to the world that from then on he intended to strike terrorists preventively on Russian territory as well as beyond, I said to myself, Uh-oh. We've got ourselves an ally that may cause more problems than all our enemies combined. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. In the almost 19 months since the siege that left more than 344 hostages, 172 of them children, dead, Putin has been carefully emulating his more experienced colleagues. Like Sharon, he went after terrorist leaders and managed to kill a couple of them. These tough measures did about as much good to Russia as they do to Israel. The only difference was that the world did not defend the Chechen terrorists' sacred right to kill and maim their victims with the same passion they usually defend the Arab terrorists' sacred right to kill and maim theirs.

Like President Bush, Putin managed to indict just a single participant in the attack. The man is currently on trial. As far as striking terrorists goes, Putin summoned all the self-discipline a martial arts expert can possibly master and managed to contain his vengeful urges. Instead of fighting a war against terrorists, he proceeded to sell modern weapons and nuclear technology to the worst terrorist states in the world. That's his war on terror.

What about ours? It forges ahead. Iraqis enthusiastically kill each other. Unfortunately, they also kill American soldiers, but their sacrifices do not seem to produce any tangible benefits for this country or the remnants of the free world. The price of gas has reached a plateau twice as high as its pre-war level. The terror alert indicator has been frozen in the middle of the scale for such a long time that most people no longer remember if it has a meaning.

The original goal of defeating terrorism has been substituted with a pipe dream of bringing democracy to primitive peoples who harbor an old, deep, incurable hatred towards us simply because we happen to be non-Muslims, and the fact that we are so much more advanced and lead so much better lives only makes their hatred burn ever brighter. Even if democracy and Islam were not mutually exclusive in principle, the question remains, how would this make the United States any safer than we are today? And if it wouldn't, then we should ask what concrete steps our government has undertaken to diminish the terrorists' capacity to threaten this country and its citizens. The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and other reorganizations within the government bureaucracy has so far failed to bring down the terror alert indicator, much less produce any tangible results, so I will not count them in. Liberal media regularly publish tearful stories about unwarranted restrictions imposed on good Muslims by the bad government of the United States, but I see too many of those good Muslims in the streets to believe that these atrocities may have put a dent into jihad. Astronomically expensive efforts to improve the security of our airports have been easily sabotaged by politically-correct government policies, which, basically speaking, mean that my chances to smuggle a bomb on board an aircraft are better if I wear a keffiyeh and scream allah akhbar!during the security check.

Once in a long while we hear of a Muslim charity shut down for financing terrorism. Its runners receive a slap on the wrist and continue collecting donations for jihad under another phony name. Does this put even a dent into financing terror? How can it if the United States government is probably the second, after the European Union, most generous donor to the Palestinian Authority? Or are we the first? The PA is the PLO; it has the same leaders, the same members, the same goals, and applies the same atrocious means towards achieving its murderous ends. Therefore, the PA is a terrorist organization. Therefore, it is our enemy. As of now, this enemy remains undefeated. Would the US government consider providing humanitarian aid to the German population before the date for D-Day was even chosen?

A war is supposed to be a process. It goes on for a while. Then one side wins, the other one loses, and everyone who didn't get killed, moves on. Our War on Terror is no longer a process. It has become a state. A permanent state. We may succeed in replacing a government we don't like with a government we hope to be able to control. Trying to make it look legitimate, we may succeed in putting together a semblance of elections that can win Jimmy Carter's endorsement. But the government we are hoping to control will inevitably bend to pressure from the people who hate us more than they love their own children. The democracy we are trying to build among the cavemen will never take root. Jihad will continue unabated as long as Islam is allowed to wage its war against us.

In the immediate aftermath of Beslan, a diplomat accredited at the UN was on TV gravely expanding on terrorism and related matters. He was asked why the UN hadn't taken any steps against the Chechen “militants.”

“It is so complicated,” the diplomat complained. “Those people are not controlled by any government.”

“Bingo!” I thought. I suddenly saw how simple it was to define terrorism: Terrorism is a military action conducted by a non-governmental organization. Armed with this definition, we can now declare terrorism a capital offense. You participate in it — you are liable to be killed on sight, no questions asked, and no statute of limitation. No more humanitarian assistance to the murderers. No more invitations to the White House. No more hiding in the Mukata, in Paris, or even at Berkeley. Just an uncomplicated choice between death in battle and death on the gallows. Had we the honesty to implement it, how long do you think terrorism would have remained the favorite weapon of jihad? Oh, Muslims would no doubt have thought of something else, because there is no Islam without jihad, but we would find efficient ways to deal with anything they could possibly bring up against us. It's not that we don't have the power to end jihad; the problem is, we are not willing to.

Why will my definition of terrorism never be accepted? Because it would give Israel legal means to stop the unending Arab war against it, and this is exactly what the international community is determined to prevent. The world wants Israel destroyed. As a result, terrorism remains undefeated and behaves like untreated cancer — it spreads, leading to Beslan, to Madrid, to 9/11.

Do we need another 9/11 to finally wake us up? Or have we become completely incapable of doing the right thing even if our survival, the survival of our country and our entire magnificent civilization depends on it? Can we still tell right from wrong?

Zack Lieberberg is a Russian-born mathematician living in New York. This article was translated from the Russian by Yachiko Sagamori