Heed Security Council's call to fight worldwide terrorism

Now that the United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution calling on all nations to take sweeping action against terrorism -- including freezing terrorists' assets and calling a halt to their funding -- it is indeed time for action and not more political posturing. Nations whose banking laws facilitate the easy transit of cash, those whose armament manufacturers are dealing with terrorist groups -- no matter how clandestinely -- those that permit terrorist groups to operate with virtual impunity can no longer afford to hide behind their rhetoric. The shadowy, intertwining terrorist networks can only be broken if their links are exposed to international scrutiny.
Murderous fanatics: While the most heinous terrorist crimes ever witnessed were committed on U.S. soil September 11, many other countries have suffered from murderous political and religious fanaticism.
The groups may be different, but they share a number of traits. None could get its way if their causes were subject to a vote of the people. Taliban has kept its stranglehold on Afghanistan by terrorizing the people there. The residents of Northern Ireland have decisively voted for peace, but neither the Catholic Irish Republican Army nor Protestant paramilitary organizations will ever be satisfied with a result that keeps them from power.
Most see their causes as holy wars which they justify by a perverse reading of scripture. It does not matter that Islamic scholars, for example, emphatically deny that the Koran encourages terrorism. The pope's call for peace has no effect on the IRA.
Many are still fighting battles that were waged centuries ago. Much of the Serbs' vicious treatment of Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars derived from the Serbs defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo.
Terrorist groups appeal to those who need to see everything as either black or white, us or them. No shades of gray are permitted within the world view of, say, the anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors or the members of separatist movements -- from Basques in Spain, to white supremacist militias in the United States, to the doomsday cult that released poison gas in Tokyo.
Terrorism must be fought on all fronts. Their causes must be exposed for the shams they are. Woven together, enough lunatic fringes can become the fabric of international instability.
No nation is safe, unless all nations are safe.