LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Friend,

The atrocities of September 11, 2001, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983, the Iranian Revolution of 1979—after these and so many other assaults over so many years, we in the West are still struggling to figure out how to defend ourselves from those sworn to destroy us.

It’s worse than that: We are still arguing over what to call them. Are they militant Islamists, Islamo-fascists, Jihadists, terrorists, extremists, or something else entirely?

In the 20th century, America and its allies defeated Nazism and Communism, two movements that also were determined to crush freedom. But as the eminent historian Bernard Lewis has observed: “In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues . . . we knew we would prevail. . . . It is different today. We don’t know who we are, we don’t know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy.”

Our enemies have tried to tell us. Osama bin Laden has named the targets al-Qaeda plans to humiliate and defeat. At the top of the list: “the global Crusader alliance with the Zionist Jews, led by America, Britain and Israel.” Lower on the list are Hindus, Buddhists, and moderate Muslims.

Hassan Abbassi is a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader. Speaking at Tehran’s Al-Hussein University last year, he said: “We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization... The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations and by means of our missiles. . . We know how we are going to attack them.”

The militant Islamists are inspired by a vision: Islam’s “golden age” of conquest, expansion, and imperialism, a period that began in the 7th century when an Islamic army exploded out of Arabia and rapidly established its dominance from Spain to India.

Yet many in America and Europe continue to believe that the Islamists can and should be appeased; that all we need to do is address their “grievances,” offer them a little more land, power, and prestige, and surely they’ll stop hating us and trying to kill us.

There are, today, more Muslims than Roman Catholics in the world. It is from this vast population that al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranian mullahs, and similar movements expect to recruit their combatants, their suicide-bombers and saboteurs, in this generation and the generations ahead.

Money is no object. That’s because we’re financing their war against us; we’re paying to train the terrorists and provide them with the weapons they need to slaughter us.

The West’s appetite for oil is providing our enemies with resources on an unprecedented scale. It was only in 1938 that American engineers discovered oil in Arabia. By 1972, oil brought the Saudi family—which had laid claim to that oil and the land above it as its own, displacing rival Arabian tribes—$2.7 billion in annual revenues. By 1998, Saudi oil export revenues had risen to $32 billion a year. The atrocities of 9/11 vastly increased oil’s value, bringing Saudi Arabia $63 billion in 2002. Today, the Saudis are raking in more that $200 billion annually, and the oil market is looking more bullish than ever.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Saudi Arabia remains the world’s leading source of funds for al-Qaeda and other extremist networks. Also supporting terrorism are various interests in the Persian Gulf. Persian Gulf countries earned $1.5 trillion in oil revenue from 2002 to 2006, twice as much as in the previous five-year period.

That means there is no need for those who support a violent jihad against the West to make hard choices between guns and butter—or even between guns, bombs, and nuclear facilities on one hand and yachts, private jets, and palaces on the other. Thanks to you and me, Saudi princes, Iranian sheiks, and other petroleum-rich America-haters can enjoy both—and still have plenty of money left over to buy up American companies and invest in American think tanks, advocacy groups, public relations agencies, law firms, and, of course, universities.

Every day, FDD works hard to address all these challenges. Through research, education and communications, investigative journalism, legal initiatives, and targeted campaigns, we fight a war of ideas. We reveal lies and speak truths. We identify the policies that can be most effective, and we energetically market those policies to those who can implement them.

The next few years will be pivotal for the United States and other free nations around the world. An asymmetrical war is being waged against us by a fanatical, transnational, religiously motivated movement operating from safe havens and receiving support from wealthy and hostile regimes.

To understand who our enemies are, what they intend, and how best to defeat them is essential—and it is the mission of FDD. We are fighting for the world we will bequeath to our children and our grandchildren. We again thank those who are investing in the future through FDD.

 

Sincerely,

Clifford D. May