“We will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war—to the disruption and defeat of the global terror network,” he said.

On the homefront, Bush announced the creation of a new cabinet level position, naming Penn. Gov. Thomas J. Ridge ’67 Director of Homeland Security, dedicated to stopping the roots of terrorist activity in the U.S.

Bush also reassured the world’s Muslim community that the U.S. does not equate Islam with terorism, instead calling the terrorists “traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”

In recent days, a spate of violence directed against Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans has swept the U.S., in misguided attempts at retaliation for the attacks.

“The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends,” Bush said. “Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.”

Last night, Bush declared that the U.S. would not back down from that enemy.

“The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain,” Bush said. “We will meet violence with patient justice—assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come.”

--Staff writer Imtiyaz H. Delawala can be reached at delawala@fas.harvard.edu.