Preparing for the Worst

Larry Diamond - The terrorist attacks of September 11 have made Americans aware of many painful truths. We are hated and resented (in part because we are envied) by many people around the world who are looking for simple answers to the failures of their own countries and the miseries and disappointments of their own lives. Feeling powerless, these people despise the world's only superpower. Feeling humiliated, they view American pride and success as outrageous arrogance. Some of these people are indoctrinated, organized, and trained to inflict shocking and indiscriminate violence on the United States and other Western democracies that they somehow see as the cause of their suffering or grievance. Whatever their rhetoric, these terrorists do not have concrete and limited goals. They glory in destruction, and their nihilist impulses have no limits. They want to kill as many Americans as possible. They want to destroy the United States and roll back several centuries of human progress.