Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that as a society, whether American, Canadian, French, English, regardless of what part of the world we come from, the attack that took place on New York is an attack on humanity, on civilization and on the foundation of democracy as we know it everywhere in every part of the world.
As a result of that, when an American is hurting, we are hurting. Simply put, the way the terrorists are getting around trying to undermine our civilization has to be stopped. Collectively we have to take action. Certainly the Americans historically have taken a leadership role on the international scene. We do not have to go back to the first world war, the second world war or the recent collapse of the former communist regime in the Soviet Union.
Whether we love them or not, the Americans have played a role in the world that no other country has played. They put the first man on the moon. They have done a tremendous amount of things. From time to time we may be upset with them because of this and that, nonetheless, at this point in time we have to stand collectively with our friends and democracies around the world to combat terrorism and get to the root of the problem. Otherwise, the next attack may be on others around the world. We must stop it now and get to the root of it.
While we are doing that, however, we cannot discriminate against those who are living among us, those who are grieving as we are grieving. That is what the terrorists want us to do. We cannot create a situation where we give them the breathing room to cultivate and create more radicals within communities around the world. We must be aggressive and proactive, we must be engaged and we must work with communities around the world to ensure that the target is the terrorist.
The target should not be somebody who comes from country A or country B. The target has to be the terrorists. The terrorists are using the name of a country and the name of a religion to obtain credibility. We must combat that because one's religion and place of origin have nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorism is an act of crime against humanity and we must fight it as such.