Media Relations
News Releases
For Release Upon Receipt - September 12, 2001
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DR. SILBER'S STATEMENT TO THE BOSTON GLOBE
Americans learned how it feels to be an Israeli-how it feels to share the painful awareness that there is no real security, that death can strike anytime anywhere. For the first time since 1865 war has come to the American shores.
I am in Berlin, where flags fly at half-staff, and Chancellor Schroeder has extended his condolences to the American people, and affirmed European solidarity with the United States in what he, President Chirac of France and Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain describe as an attack on all of the civilized world, a war against the democratic way of life. Moreover, NATO has now formally declared that the attack on the United States is an attack on the fifteen states of the Alliance.
Anti-American talk in Germany has ceased. And, almost incredibly, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty has been invoked for the first time over an attack on the United States itself. It is clear that this Alliance, created for the defense of Europe, is now supported for the defense of the United States at the highest levels of government in Germany and among ordinary Germans.
Die Welt's Michael Sturmer has said that we must "understand the historical, cultural and religious worlds that now confront the West. The clash of civilizations envisioned by Samuel Huntington is bloody reality."
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Samuel Huntington is the author of The Clash of Civilizations and is a professor at Harvard University.
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