Speech by Senator Jon Kyl Delivered on the Senate Floor July 9, 2007 Mr. President, most of the activity with regard to the terrorist plot in Great Britain occurred while we were on our breaks back home. I wanted to briefly discuss that today because it seems to me that the terror plot in Great Britain must serve as a wakeup call to those of us here in the United States who perhaps have been too complacent about the terrorist threat. These plots remind us of the dangers that we really face each and every day and we need employ all possible intelligence and follow up in order to stop attacks and roll back these terrorist groups. The war against terrorists and the radical ideologies that drive terrorism, this war is going to go on for a long time and attacks will not occur every day. So we’ve got to remain resolute in the face of this long-term threat, never allowing temporary respites from violence to tempt us into thinking that the terrorists have stopped recruiting and plotting. Abroad we must confront the challenges not just of the terrorist networks but of states like Iran and Syria that provide funds and equipment in training of terrorists. And at home, we have to have adequate intelligence to find and monitor and disrupt terrorist cells that could strike at any time. It requires vigilance and cooperation among many enforcement entities and importantly the support of the American people. Against this threat, this saying ﾓout of sight, out of mindﾔ can have no place. The first point Iﾒd like to make today, Mr. President, is that as the plot in Great Britain revealed, this is not about grievances. This is about ideology. There are those at home who are members of what was called the “blame America first” crowd, which is a term coined by my good friend, the late ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick to say that the Islamists hate us because of what we do. They allegedly hate us because we don’t do enough to fight poverty, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of Iraq, or because of the latest Danish cartoon or whatever. Of course this is nonsense. The radical ideology that spawns this terrorism has nothing to do with such grievances or poverty. The perpetrators of the plots in Great Britain were doctors, not individuals radicalized by unemployment or poverty-stricken slums. These plots were certainly not the result of British policy. They unfolded on the day Gordon Brown, a critic of Britainﾒs role in the 2003 invasion in Iraq, took office. Nor did they have anything to do with American policy. From what we know of the individuals involved, it appears the motivation was the same as all of the other acts of terrorism in the name of militant Islam. This radical doctrine had its roots in the early twentieth century and gained momentum through the writings of radical Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 60s, long before the Iraq War. It has everything to do with hatred of our values, of our freedoms, all that we stand for and we see the hatred and the attacks that go back several decades. Review them: the 1979 takeover of our embassy in Tehran; the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut; 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers; the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole; September 11, 2001, and all the attacks since then in Beslan, Madrid, London, and elsewhere. In every case the rationale was the same: advancement of the radical ideology of militant Islam. A perversion of the faith, to be sure, but based on their concept of the faith nonetheless. The sheer evil of the acts and the perpetrators shocks our souls especially because it is allegedly grounded in religion. People trained as doctors, those who are supposed to value and preserve life, were at the center of the plot in Great Britain to destroy innocent life. We in the West who believe in reason and rationality have trouble comprehending the mentality of militant Islam and those who subscribe to it. But we need to understand it, to call it what it is and not to shrink from this honesty because the terrorists and their sympathizers hide behind a great religion. Importantly, we must not seek to rationalize or explain the views and behavior of our enemy through our values and experiences. Militant Islam seeks not to change our policies but to destroy our very way of life and replace it with a Taliban-like society ruled by Sharia Law and its enforcers. Militant Islam has declared war on the West. Be very clear about it. It is fundamentally at odds with freedom, with democracy, with the inherent humanity of the individual, with critical thinking, and rational decision-making, not to mention all other religious beliefs. While it might be fueled by grievances, it is not caused by the West, but rather by the very backwardness and ideological rigidity that they would impose on others. The second point, Mr. President, is this. We should be clear that militant Islam, though bound together by common ideology, comes in various stripes, including: al Qaeda, responsible for 9/11, which may have inspired the recent terror plots in Great Britain; Iran’s radical regime whose leader vows to wipe Israel off the map and envisions a world without America and which is speeding toward the development of nuclear weapons; Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia which is funding radical ideology and mosques and madrassas over the world, including here at home; groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which cloaks its radical ideology in a new veneer of tolerance while its activities directly support terrorist groups like Hamas, and many others. But state-sponsored testing of the United States and the West is also in full force. Iran is testing our resolve in Iraq where it is using its Revolutionary Guard and also its terrorist client Hezbollah to train and arm those who are fighting our soldiers. Iran is testing the resolve of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, where it is providing support to al Qaeda. Syria is testing our resolve in Lebanon where it is assassinating anti-Syrian officeholders, all serving as a conduit for the weapons that are rearming Hezbollah. Hamas and other terrorist client of Iran is testing our resolve in Gaza, where it launched a successful coup against the Palestinian authority of Mahmoud Abbas. Third, Mr. President, a successful American response depends on resolve and support of the American people. We must understand the nature of our enemy and its ideology, confronting them head on with full confidence in the rightness of our cause. This is not a matter of moral relativism. We must not allow ourselves to be gagged by faux political correctness. We can say that these terrorists were bound together and motivated by a hateful ideology grounded in their interpretation of Islam without condemning any other Muslims. We must not embrace groups who tell us they stand for peace without renouncing violence in the name of Islam. We must not reward evil with retreat from any of the battlefields where the fight is raging, including Iraq and Afghanistan. And we must be willing to support intelligence and enforcement activities, including incarcerating those who have plotted against or attacked us. Mr. President, as we celebrate the success of protecting our homeland since 9/11, and preventing loss of life from the attempted attacks in Great Britain, let our words and actions prove that we have not forgotten the resolve that we displayed six years ago today, and let us not fall into the temptation of blaming ourselves for the actions of those who, inspired by hatred, have declared war on us. It is not grievances which have spawned this hatred and these attacks, but rather the hateful ideology of militant Islam.