The United States must rebuild the power of the United Nations and help "end the empire of oil" if it wants to win the "war on terror," U.S. Sen. John Kerry said Sunday. The Massachusetts Democrat avoided explicit criticisms of the Bush administration during a wide-ranging speech on the global dynamics of terror. But he said Bush's policy of imposing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan risked looking like a crusade. "If it is seen as the result of an army marching through Muslim lands, it will fail," Kerry told an audience at the University of Ulster campus in Londonderry, the second-largest city in Northern Ireland.The "war on terror," Kerry said, was not principally about the U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but was "fundamentally a war within Islam for the heart and soul of Islam, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia."
Kerry, who lost to Bush in the 2004 presidential election, said today's myriad terrorist threats to security in the West and within Muslim nations themselves exist in part because "no center of moral authority has emerged to stop those who would murder in the name of Islam." But Kerry suggested the current focus on American-led military interventions was not the way to promote stable democracies in the Middle East, a region of dictatorships underpinned by oil money. Sustainable political change required concerted international political pressure combined with appropriate development aid. "Great American presidents, from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy, understood that success requires a community of nations working together, drawing strength from shared sacrifice and steadfast commitment to our shared ideals," he said.
Kerry said the UN must play a forceful role in places like Iraq and Darfur, referring to the western region of Sudan where Sudanese Arab militias have been wiping out black African communities with impunity. "Literally, the West must reclaim its moral leadership," he said.
Developing effective replacements for oil-based fuels also was key, he said. The West's insatiable appetite for petroleum from the Middle East "has frustrated every impulse towards modernization of the region, while giving its regimes the resources to hold onto power. The international community of democratic nations cannot afford to continue funding both sides of the war on terror. We must end the empire of oil."