Fundamentalism is a perversion of an honorable religion.

Question: Why do the terrorists hate us?

John McCain:I’m sure that we may have had something to do with it by some action of ours, but I think fundamentally we ought to understand that this is a perverted adaptation of an honorable religion in which people want to destroy everything we stand for and believe in. They wanna destroy our ideals, our principles, our Bill of Rights – our fundamental principles that have permeated our thought, and action, and governing bodies not only in America, but in other places in the world. And they wanna destroy it, and they hate it. And that’s very hard for us to understand; but we better understand they’re making very good use of cyberspace. It’s a hatred. It’s an irrational hatred of us. It’s a belief that their religion is telling them to destroy us, and that . . . that their fundamental faith and reward . . . rewards are based on a destruction of all western beliefs and ideals. And it’s hard if not impossible for us to understand, but we better appreciate that it’s there; it’s unrelenting; it has many . . . takes many forms ranging from doctors in Glasgow to Denmark to Germany; to efforts to establish Al Qaeda cells in the United States of America.

We need a strong military intelligence and diplomatic capability; but we also better understand that it’s gonna be an ideological battle at the end of the day just as the Cold War was. And we’re not doing nearly enough in the area of cyberspace and winning the ideological struggle as we need to. And it’s gonna be a long, hard struggle. It’s gonna be a long war.