Uniting against terrorism - George Bush's address before an international conference on terrorism sponsored by Discover magazine on Jan. 20, 1987

US Department of State Bulletin, April, 1987

A few months later, another gang ofterrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro. Leon Klinghoffer was on board taking a last holiday cruise with his dying wife. The terrorists singled him out, a sick old man in a wheelchair, and they executed him. They killed him because he was an American.

Last March, four American terroristvictims included a mother and the baby she held in her arms. Not long afterward, two American soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed and another 150 people injured in the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub; a nightclub, I might add, that was targeted because it entertained Americans.

As an American official, it's naturalfor me to highlight incidents where Americans have been killed. But I refer to these specific attacks to make a more general point. And that is that terrorism, wherever it takes place, is primarily directed against democratic governments and their citizens. The moral values on which democracy is based--individual rights, equality under the law, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and the peaceful resolution of disputes--are all threatened by those who attempt to impose their will through terrorist violence.

Terrorism ranks as one of thegreatest modern day threats to democracy in our own hemisphere. Consider for a moment Latin America, where in recent years Argentina, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, and Bolivia have all taken impressive strides toward democratic rule. These countries, led by strong and sometimes heroic statesmanship, are building new, more open societies for their people in the face of murderous outfits such as the FMLN [Farabundo Marti National Liberation Movement] in El Salvador, the AVC [Alfaro Lives] in Ecuador, the M-19 in Colombia, and the Nicaraguan and Cuban Governments--both of which have been exporting subversion and terrorism throughout our hemisphere for years.

Terrorist Claims and Goals

Terrorists and their apologists frequentlyclaim that they are merely "soldiers' or "guerrillas' or "freedom fighters' in a struggle for national liberation. I reject this premise. And the American people reject it.

Terrorists are criminals. They usemurder, torture, hijacking, and the kidnapping of innocent people to further their own evil ends. In some cases the terrorist may even intend that his actions escalate into general warfare. But that does not convert a terrorist into a soldier any more than his political aspirations turn him into a statesman.

When terrorists aim their machineguns at a peaceful sidewalk cafe as they did in El Salvador in 1985, or when they slaughter worshipers as they did in an Istanbul synagogue just 4 months ago, they forfeit all right to call themselves soldiers or freedom fighters.

Terrorism attempts to erode thelegitimacy of democratic institutions. Its real and lasting effects cannot be measured in body counts or property damage but rather by its long-term psychological impact and the subsequent political results.

The terrorists' cry is: Don't trustyour government, your democratic institutions, your principles of law. None of these pillars of an open society can protect you. Give in to our demands. The terrorists' goal is to attract attention to themselves and to their causes in definance of democratic and legal processes. In that sense, terrorism is a kind of violent graffiti, and simply by capturing headlines and television time the terrorist partially succeeds.