TRADE A FRONT-LINE WEAPON AGAINST TERRORISM

By Arthur Gorlick

• The United States unleashed its offensive against terrorists and those who protect them with a furious barrage of smart bombs, laser-guided rockets and other sophisticated ordnance that rained down day and night on targets in Afghanistan.
  
  But the U.S. has other powerful tools in its arsenal - and trade is one of the mightiest of them, syndicated columnist Jack Kemp noted recently.
  
  "Trade should be a front-line weapon against terrorism,'' Kemp said in his column distributed by Copley News Service.
  
  "trade not only strengthens us and our allies in the armed struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, it also gives us a field on which to compete against this vestige of pre-modern fundamentalism with the young people of the world, who would become the next generation of terrorists.''
  
  Kemp pointed to the recently approved free trade agreement between the United States and Jordan.
  
  The pact "illustrates how trade can create incentives for other nations, particularly modern Arab states, to live in peace, harmony and commerce with the rest of the world,'' Kemp wrote.
  
  Hostility to personal liberty and economic opportunity in many Islamic countries "both impoverishes and radicalizes people who, by rights, should have no quarrel with Western civilization,'' Kemp said in his Oct. 3 column.
  
  "It's a good sign,'' he said, that efforts are under way to improve trade terms with Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country.