*EPF202 05/18/2004
Winning War on Terror Will Take A Generation, Rumsfeld Says
(Says much of the work must be done by millions of Islamic moderates) (690)

Washington -- Winning the global war against terror, like the Cold War before it, will be the work of a generation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says.

Terrorists have a tremendous advantage, he said at the Heritage Foundation's President's Club meeting May 17, in that it is impossible to defend against attacks that could occur anywhere and employ many different techniques.

"To defeat them," he said, "we not only have to eliminate their leaders, but we also have to wage a war of ideas to win the allegiance of a new generation that needs to see that freedom is a vastly better choice than terrorism and hatred."

Rumsfeld said terrorists are using intimidation to discourage people from working with the coalition in Iraq and "break the growing confidence of Iraqis in their right and their ability to live in freedom." The world "must not allow terrorists or regime remnants to determine the fate of 25 million Iraqis," he said.

"Think of what terrorism is. Terrorism does not mean you blow up a building. Terrorism means you terrorize. The purpose of it is to terrorize... and the fear that exists in that country that that crowd might come back in, that we might leave prematurely, and that this vicious regime could take back over is real, it's palpable and it works," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld quoted Thomas Jefferson who, speaking of the process whereby the United States established democracy, said, "We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed." Similarly, the process will be difficult for Iraqis, he said.

Although it is possible that Iraq could revert to mayhem following the return to sovereignty, he said, "it's more likely that a set of serious, capable and educated men and women will find ways to make things work -- not our way, not necessarily the way of other coalition countries. Maybe slowly; indeed, very likely slowly," he continued.

He said it would be a good thing for the United Nations, NATO or individual countries to become more engaged in Iraq, noting that the more rapidly Iraq recovers and becomes a positive and constructive force, the better that is for neighboring states.

Asked about the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, Rumsfeld said that the United States cannot "just grab them both by the scruff of the neck and shove them together. It doesn't work that way," he explained. "They've got to work this out. They've got to figure out a way that they can live together in peace."

Rumsfeld suggested that terrorists are trying to hijack the religion of Islam. "They are feeding money into these schools that teach people that it's in their interest, religious interest, if you will, to go out and kill people," he said.

In winning the battle of ideas against terrorism, Rumsfeld said, "a great deal of that work is ultimately going to have to be done by people in that religion. They are going to simply --- millions and millions and millions --- hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims are going to have to take back their religion. And we have to try to find ways to help them."

The secretary said that the United States is providing the world "a seminar on what happens when things go wrong in a democracy" regarding the photos of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib detention facility. The abuse was discovered and reported by the military itself; the government has taken responsibility and apologized to the individuals who were harmed; and both civilian and military leaders have testified under oath before Congress in one of the many investigations under way to determine what happened there, he said.

The world has "watched a free media publish stories of all types [about the incident], from the accurate to the grossly distorted. Iraq and the watching world have seen that in our country, no one is above the law, that we are a nation governed by laws," he said.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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