Muslim Newspapers speak out on Terror
The London-based al-Hayat commented on Sunday's attack on European tourists in Saudi Arabia, saying it broke a six-month "silence of terrorism" in the kingdom. The Saudi-financed daily said the "ugly crime," in which four people were killed, came in a new form and place. It's as if the terrorists want to send a message that terror will from now on target tourists, it added, noting that an extremist trend opposes the idea of foreign tourism in their county. The daily, distributed in many Arab capitals, suggested those who carried out the attack may have been "victims of a (religious) fatwa (decree) that allows the spilling of tourists' blood," and the perpetrators might not have been a terrorist group. It called on religious leaders to forbid attacking foreigners, saying the "voices of the clerics and scholars are still too low or non-existent, although they are influential." It stressed that such violence normally carries the name of religion, and fighting it starts in the mosques.
However, a commentator from UPI also declares:
U.S. allies and their opponents, American congressmen and terrorist leaders, professional politicians and ordinary people, journalists and generals are increasingly comparing the war in Iraq with Vietnam. They are all wrong. Iraq is not Vietnam. The situation in Iraq is much worse, and the majority of parallels with the Vietnam war do not apply.
I don't have much time, but these arguments are so simplistic, it's absurd:
It was not very difficult for the United States to leave Vietnam. South Vietnam lost, and North Vietnam won
In Vietnam, the sides were fighting for control over the country, whereas Iraq became a territory a long time ago.
The war in Iraq involves everyone. The Iraqis believe that it is a war of insurgents against the occupants; the West believes that it is the war of the coalition forces against the terrorists; a war between Arabs and Kurds; and a war between Kurds and Turkmen. It is also a Shiite-Sunni war, and Iraq is the main front of this war which is unfolding in the entire Muslim world from Lebanon to Pakistan.
His first mistake was comparing the two wars, because they are both so entirely different. Secondly, and finally, because it's late, he compares the multitude of players in Iraq as if Vietnam was a singles tennis match. Vietnam involved the North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, the U.S., Chinese, Russians, French... just to name a few. And the implications - the spread of communism, shouldn't be so idly dismissed because the new threat of Islamic terror has emerged.
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