Marcy Kaptur: “this evening, as our Marines are on the ground in Afghanistan, I would like to posit that the United States is engaged…”

“this evening, as our Marines are on the ground in Afghanistan, I would like to posit that the United States is engaged in more than a war. Indeed, we are engaged in the middle of a revolution. Today, Thomas Friedman, New York Times News Service, wrote an editorial entitled ``Shedding the Veil of bin Laden,'' which I will submit for the Record, and I will only read a small part of it. Mr. Friedman is traveling in that part of the world, in the United Arab Emirates, and he says: ``Over coffee the other day here in the gulf, an Arab friend confided to me something that was deeply troubling to him. He said, My 11-year-old son thinks bin Laden is a good man. For Americans, Osama bin Laden is a mass murderer. But for many young Arabs, bin Laden, even in defeat, is still Robin Hood. What attracts them to him is his sheer defiance of everything young Arabs and Muslims detest,'' Friedman goes on, ``their hypocritical rulers, Israel, U.S. dominance, and their own backwardness.'' He then goes on to quote Steven Cohen, the Middle East analyst, who says, ``We in America can't just go on looking at the Arab world as a giant gas station, indifferent to what happens inside. Because the gas is now leaking and all around people are throwing matches. Every day,'' he says, ``I see signs that this war of ideas is possible.'' And, indeed, we are involved in a war of ideas.…”