Re: Why do the terrorists hate us?

Description: Fundamentalism is a perversion of an honorable religion.

Question: Why do the terrorists hate us?

Transcript: I’m sure that we may have had something to do with it by some action of ours, but I think fundamentally we ought to understand that this is a perverted adaptation of an honorable religion in which people want to destroy everything we stand for and believe in. They wanna destroy our ideals, our principles, our Bill of Rights – our fundamental principles that have permeated our thought, and action, and governing bodies not only in America, but in other places in the world. And they wanna destroy it, and they hate it. And that’s very hard for us to understand; but we better understand they’re making very good use of cyberspace.

It’s a hatred. It’s an irrational hatred of us. It’s a belief that their religion is telling them to destroy us, and that . . . that their fundamental faith and reward . . . rewards are based on a destruction of all western beliefs and ideals. And it’s hard if not impossible for us to understand, but we better appreciate that it’s there; it’s unrelenting; it has many . . . takes many forms ranging from doctors in Glasgow to Denmark to Germany; to efforts to establish Al Qaeda cells in the United States of America.

We need a strong military intelligence and diplomatic capability; but we also better understand that it’s gonna be an ideological battle at the end of the day just as the Cold War was. And we’re not doing nearly enough in the area of cyberspace and winning the ideological struggle as we need to. And it’s gonna be a long, hard struggle. It’s gonna be a long war.

Question: How do we win?

We will win because we are superior in every way. This is a struggle between good and evil. We will prevail in a long . . . In many ways, as I said, military and diplomatic intelligence. But it will be our ideals, and our beliefs, and the common values that all of us are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. That will be the way we prevail. And there’s many aspects of it which would take you and I a long, long time – such as economic developments; such as opportunities for women, etc., etc. But it is a great force for evil. We are a force for good. I have the fundamental belief and faith that we are right and we will never surrender, and eventually they will.

Better use of cyberspace. Bin Laden was able to get a message out to billions of people from some obscure place in Pakistan or Afghanistan very recently. We’ve got to make better use of the Internet. We have to set up radio and television the way we did during the Cold War. We have to provide educational opportunities. We have to be advocates for human rights and democracy, particularly in the Middle East – that they show progress there so that people have an opportunity. And all of those kind of things that you and I would be standardized approaches. But we also have to understand there are gonna be some wealthy people who are doctors in Glasgow, Scotland who are motivated to wanna become suicide bombers and destroy the airport there. So it’s not a simple approach

Recorded on: 11/20/07