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All Quotes by author - Jurgen Habermas
" After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests. "
National
September
Own
" A threatened nation can react to uncertain dangers solely through administrative channels, to the truly embarrassing situation of perhaps overreacting. "
Situation
Nation
React
" Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations. "
Disappointment
Today
Religion
" Each murder is one too many. "
Each
Too
Many
" From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out. "
Situation
View
Point Of View
" Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems. "
Goals
Cynical
Vulnerability
" Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge. "
Terrorism
Judge
Different
" I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act. "
Crime
Act
Political
" I consider Bush's decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning. "
Decision
Mistake
Meaning
" If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact. "
Events
World
Stand
" Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style. "
Action
Police
Style
" In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions. "
Risk
Way
Down
" Manhattan... capital of the 20th century, a city that has fascinated me for more than three decades. "
Than
Three
City
" One never really knows who one's enemy is. "
Knows
Who
Really
" Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too. "
More
New
People
" Partisans fight on familiar territory with professed political objectives to conquer power. This is what distinguishes them from terrorists. "
Conquer
Power
Political
" Perhaps at a later point important developments will be traced back to September 11. But for now we do not know which of the many scenarios will actually hold in the future. "
Future
Important
Will
" Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse - a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public. "
Impact
World
Reality
" Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. "
Opportunities
Normal
Ideal
" Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis. "
Political
Afghanistan
Found
" Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed. "
Before
Years
War
" The clever, albeit fragile, coalition against terrorism brought together by the U.S. government might be able to advance the transition from classical international law to a cosmopolitan order. "
Transition
Government
Law
" The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country. "
Change
Country
Clear
" The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War. "
Years
War
Thirty
" The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger. "
Government
Media
American
" The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources. "
Resources
Danger
Falling
" The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism. "
Danger
Essence
Terrorism
" Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism. "
Religious
Political
Encounter
" What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation. "
New
American
Buildings
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