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"If there are no 'good' terrorists, it follows that civilized states must , act collectively against all of them. We have to grasp the fact that to hurt one terrorist movement is to hurt them all. So, on the military level, I would like to see a coordinated, well-financed, informal and secret effort by the major civilized powers to discover and exchange information about movements, routes, identities, weapons stocks, methods, plans, codes, safe houses and bases of all terrorists everywhere. We must be prepared to devise and carry through concerted operations. The hydra is less likely to survive if struck simultaneously in several places. All the democracies must have trained antiterrorist units, and they must be accustomed to acting in concert.
"For the terrorist, there can be no hiding places. The terrorist must never be allowed to feel safe anywhere in the world. A terrorist kept constantly on the defensive is an ineffective terrorist."
--Author Paul Johnson
(Modern Times)
"We must realize that fighting terrorism poses a problem of external defense, not only one of internal law-and-order. It is irrelevant to ask whether we endanger democracy if we fight terrorism with appropriate means. Second, our defense has to be collective, coordinated by all democratic countries. Third, we must stop making exceptions for terrorists, whatever the causes they claim to espouse. Fourth, we must understand that terrorism is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of the Soviet Union's program of global domination, a program that includes among its interim objectives the achievement of military superiority, the promotion of one-sided doctrines of noninterference, the domination of the Socialist International and the nonaligned movement, and the waging of systematic disinformation."
--Author Jean-Francois Revel
(Without Marx or Jesus)
"Little imagination is needed to understand the dangers to the world if terrorist regimes and groups were ever to acquire nuclear weapons. Libya's Colonel Gaddafi has for years tried to acquire nuclear weapons. He has pressed the Soviets to supply him with a plutonium-producing reactor. He has offered Pakistan cash and uranium in a nuclear trade. He has tried to buy nuclear weapons from China. At the very least, he is building the intellectual resources in Libya to help make weapons of his own. Libya's Tajura Nuclear Research Center offers use of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium. The leaders of the West must face up to the ultimate terrorist threat."
--Senator Alan Cranston ^
"Is there some compensating advantage that justifies television interviews with terrorists? I do not believe there is. The justification commonly advanced is that "we need to know what these people think." But that is nonsense. To begin with, we invariably know what they think long before they appear on television to tell us. Second, what they say on television is not necessarily what they think (which is much more accurately conveyed by what they do--kneecapping, amputations, point-blank murder and the like). It is sugared propaganda."
--John O'Sullivan, associate editor,
the Times of London