US elder statesman Henry Kissinger said Sunday that whoever wins the US election will have to undertake international "healing" to confront the huge challenges in Iraq and the war on terror. Kissinger, a Republican former secretary of state, said he supports President George W. Bush in Tuesday's vote climax but said in an article for Newsweek magazine: "Whatever the outcome, the United States cannot tackle this agenda except in the context of a commitment by all sides to healing."
Kissinger said the election winner will face challenges as great as those confronted by the United States after World War II.
"No president has faced an agenda of comparable scope. This is not hyperbole; it is the hand history has dealt this generation.
"Never before has it been necessary to conduct a war with neither front lines nor geographic definition and, at the same time, to rebuild fundamental principles of world order to replace the traditional ones which went up in the smoke of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
Kissinger said the challenge faced by whoever wins Tuesday's election could be compared to that faced by president Harry Truman at the end of World War II in 1945.
"The Soviet Union was emerging as a threat to global equilibrium, while the war had left a vacuum in Central Europe. But the Soviet challenge was concrete and geographically defined. Today's principle threats are abstract and mobile.
"Terror has no fixed address; it has attacked from Bali to Singapore, Riyadh, Istanbul, Moscow, Madrid, Madrid, Tunis, New York and Washington."
Kissinger said that Iraq was the most urgent problem requiring unity in Washington as well as on the international stage.
"If President Bush prevails, it is important that America's adversaries not confuse the passion of an election period with lack of unity regarding ultimate goals."
He added that if Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry wins "there is an overwhelming need for immediate co-operation between the incoming and outgoing administration, lest the rhetoric describing the war as unnecessary at the wrong place, coupled with the hiatus imposed by the months of transition undermine the confidence of the Iraqi authorities and cause a collapse before the new team can even begin to chart a course."
According to Kissinger, "the basic adversary is the is the radical, fundamentalist militant fringe of Islam, which aims to overthrow both moderate Islamic societies and all others it perceives as standing in the way of restoring an Islamic caliphate."
He added that "many societies that questioned America's intervention nevertheless have a stake in a successful outcome" in Iraq and the war on terror.
Kissinger said that if a radical government emerges in Baghdad "the entire Islamic world will find itself in turmoil."
Comments
Comments are closed.