The converse of this hypothesis is also true. Our economy depends on our security. That is, the resources, natural and otherwise, of any country are limited. We need to invest in our technology, in our workforce, and in the education of our young children to spur growth. If we are secure, we can focus more clearly on those priorities.
Energy independence and homeland security are linked. During the past three decades we've gone through several oil crises. Each time, prices have shot up. We promised ourselves we would take immediate and aggressive action to render us less dependent on foreign sources of oil. But every time the price at th pump dropped and the cost of other fuels declined, we lost our ardor and our will to do so. Unless we embark on a comprehensive approach to energy development, we will find ourselves in the same predicament.
Imagine the national and international impac if we committed the resources to drive innovation across every potential energy source. The positive environmental, competitive, and economic impact is almost limitless. Jobs, exports, reduced carbon footprints, and yes, greater security.
To be sure, had all gone right, there would still have been great loss of life and property. Even so, there is no doubt that many more people died and many more suffered than would have occurred if the government network had been working together in the way we had planned it.
If we had been able to establish a regional office in New Orleans, there would have been mutual support to deal with everything from evacuation to health care to emergency food and water supplies--and attention given to the immense task of dealing with the cleanup, and the even more daunting task of helping recapture the spirit of a city and its environs.
But with notable exceptions, such as UNICEF and its response to national disasters, the organization hasn't served the purposes its founders intended. The mantra is always "Take it to the U.N." In the case of Iraq, what was the magic number of sanctions that the international body could impose on Saddam before taking more drastic action? 12, 20, 50? Like many Americans, I had grown impatient with the posturing and impotence the United Nations displayed. After all, Saddam had used poison gas against his own people, and thousands of Kurds had died as a result. The United Nations could not prevent such a disaster, nor could it adequately respond to it.
Since the inception of NAFTA, trade with Canada and Mexico had tripled, yet the infrastructure (bridges, tunnels, etc.) needed to move the goods had not been expanded or improved. With the tightening of rules and the intensifying of inspections, the natural result was a crushing blow to commerce.
The natural reaction of 9/11 --keep everyone out-- was neither realistic nor desirable for our own security or prosperity. We are inextricably linked by the economic, diplomatic, and cultural forces of globalization, and the ties that bind us need protection and preservation.
My worldview of the irreversible nature of America's interdependence on the rest of the world for economic and security reasons was confirmed again when I traveled early in my tenure with the Coast Guard. During an inspection of a port, we were invited to board a bulk cargo ship. I ascended the pilot ladder and boarded the ship registered in Singapore, with an Indian crew, awaiting American grain to transport to Japan.
I stood there stone-faced, but my insides were churning. I thought of my own kids, and thousands of other children, who had by then viewed those horrible images from the Twin Towers over and over. Many thoughts and images came to mind. I stood silently in front of the cameras for about fifteen seconds--which in television is almost a lifetime. (Later aides told me that they thought they saw me tear up for the first time.) I responded, finally, more in terms of a dad than as a governor:
"It's pretty difficult to explain to your kids that there are people in the world who would kill innocent men, women, and children and subject them to the enormous terror associated with these events to advance a cause. There's nobody that's claimed, as I understand to date, responsibility for these acts. Whether they do or not, we will find them."
After 9/11, bioterrorism became a subject of widespread speculation and concern. A survey of health officials indicated the nation was not equipped to deal with terrorist attacks using biological weapons. The big problem, one official said, was "lack of basic public health infrastructure and preparedness that could thwart a terror attack of limit its effects."
As a governor, I'd had to deal with the results of floods, tornadoes, prison breaks, and terrible accidents. As difficult as that was, there was always a clear way to proceed. Rule number one: Go there, and do what you can to help. Identify with the suffering. There was a finality to other tragedies, but in this case, I wondered, "When will this end?" Moreover, the more I learned about the level of our preparedness as a nation, the more I understood the immense task ahead.
Yet in all my conversations with fellow governors over the years at our semiannual meetings I don't recall a single session devoted to domestic terrorism or to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing), radical Islam generally, or Al Qaeda in particular. As we later learned, we were not alone on our ignorance or dismissal of this developing, malignant force. Information that emerged after 9/11 revealed th Central Intelligence Agency had tried to get the threat of imminent terrorism on the agendas of the White House and the FBI, with limited success. Neither the term "Al Qaeda" nor the name bin Laden was widely known until after the 1993 attack.
One of our key tasks would be to offer particulars and do it in such a way that they would contribute to a better understanding of what potential threats there might be and, we hoped, to an ever increasing confidence in the government's efforts to thwart them.
We decided to encourage people to be prepared for an emergency by having valuable, even lifesaving supplies at home. Our "Ready Campaign": we suggested three days' worth of food and water, a battery-operated radio, medical and emergency supplies, and home protection materials intended to seal off threats from atmospheric poisons. These materials included plastic sheeting and duct tape, to be stored in a "safe room."
The campaign had some unanticipated results: One was that there was a general run on duct tape and plastic sheeting in hardware and home supply stores.
Finally, duct tape became a metaphor and punch line for late-night comedians. Duct tape in an age of potential nuclear holocaust? Duct tape is a symbol of the Bush administration's nickel-and-diming of homeland security? Duct tape as Tom Ridge taking a great threat and reducing it to a home do-it-yourself project?
The 4th Amendment to the Constitution is unambiguous. Under no circumstance can we voluntarily surrender a constitutionally protected right.
After I left the administration, the White House inquired if I could publicly support the President's use of FISA. I said I could and would but felt it was imperative the White House work with Congress to amend the FISA statute to comport with the new electronic means of surveillance and the original congressional intent. At that point they lost interest in having this discussion. I never got a call to defend their use of FISA.
In spite of allegations of playing politics, as time went on, our office was more often than not the most reluctant to raise the threat level. Despite perception to the contrary, the White House couldn't, as a matter of course, call us up and say, "Go to orange, Tom." First, we would never have done so regardless of where the order originated. There would have been mass resignations, and no change in the threat level.
Let me make it very clear. I was never directed to do so no matter how many analysts, pundits, or critics say so. Secondly, the threat advisory system approved in 2002 created a system that included cabinet members whose consensus drove the recommendation. No one, not even the president, can unilaterally alter the threat level.
Several months after the opening of the prison I met with a friend over dinner, an army general, who had been involved in many of the interrogations. "Some of those bastards," he said, "should remain on that rock forever." Others, he disclosed, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We are still wrestling with how to distinguish who is and who is not a terrorist. We still argue about the type of due process, if any, and promise to close the prison without any clear plan of how we will deal with those we do identify as terrorists.
On the domestic front, we didn't want neighbors to spy on each other, or patriots to turn into vigilantes. It wasn't our intention to fill citizens with unnecessary worry. We simply wanted people to become more aware of what was happening around them, to be on the lookout for anything that didn't look right.
In almost any other situation in government or anywhere else, praising the boss would not be an issue. But in this case, citing "the result of the president's leadership" was loaded with political implication, and this was not lost on our critics. John Kerry had just been nominated for president at the Democratic Party convention. Our announcement, as delivered with the loaded words, was seen by some as a way to divert attention from that event and to reinforce in the minds of Americans that--even as Democrats enjoyed their hour upon the political stage--only the Republican incumbent could keep America safe.
By its own estimation, the capacity of the INS to keep track of the 600,000 students who entered the country on student visas was antiquated, and the results inaccurate, or worse.
A fundamental definition of America had changed. We had gone from the country which welcomed the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" [As the Emma Lazarus poem proclaims] to being, almost overnight, one of the world's most restrictive countries. We were trying to cut ourselves off from the world at the very time that it was proving both impossible and unwise to do so. The world had become interconnected--its commerce, its sciences, its personalities, its arts, its technology, its cultures.
It is estimated we have anywhere from 10 to 14 million illegal aliens among us. It's impossible to accept the notion that this population must be identified and deported before we enact comprehensive immigration legislation.
Let's destroy the infrastructure that treats these unsuspecting illegal immigrants like chattel, indentured servants, or slaves. We should apprehend the predators, drug runners, and thieves who are here illegally, while we find a way to legitimate the presence of those who broke our laws to get here, but who have been law-abiding ever since. This does not mean guaranteeing a path to citizenship. Congress should link strong border enforcement with a biometric-based registration system for foreign workers. Common sense and technology are required, not amnesty.
They would now have their fingerprints checked with new digital technology. In a matter of a few seconds, a photo of a print could be compared electronically to thousands of FBI or other files of known criminals or terrorists. I insisted that we call the program something positive--not Exit/Entry, but US-VISIT.
Q: Where in Afghanistan is this guy?
Gov. Ridge: The guy you referred to is bin Laden. Bin Laden is a master of disguises. We know that the Taliban government in Afghanistan has been harboring him and supporting him. It is reported that he may move his location almost on a daily basis. A lot of the free world has been asking for several years: Where is this guy? We'll find him, one of these days.
Q: Are we going to retaliate, then?
Gov Ridge: This is a different kind of war that is being fought against America. In WWII, we knew who our enemies were. These people, they consider themselves martyrs. They are combatants but they don't fight our soldiers. They don't have the courage or the guts to fight our soldiers. That's not their mission. They fight our civilians. I think the president will respond in a military way. I think it will be forceful. I think it will be appropriate. We will all be united as Americans behind him.
The ignorance of all of this was widespread. Who knew there are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world living in over 50 countries. Most Americans believed that they majority of Muslims live in the Middle East. Wrong. Indonesia & Pakistan have far more. Although Muslims, they speak many languages and have different religions, economic, and political perspectives. It's unlikely that most Americans understand that Muslims embrace five basic tenets of faith. There is no God but God (Allah) and Muhammad is his messenger.
The two weeks I was focused on state business and learning what I could about our enemies was the most restless period of my life. I was often awake at 3:00 a.m., studying everything from Sufism to the exploits of Saladin.
The new government had a destabilizing effect on Lebanon. Lebanon had been friendly to America, but had fallen into a devastating civil war, with one side fueled by Syrian and Iranian support and influence. In response, Pres. Reagan ordered an American armed force into that country--a move intended to protect our interests in the Middle East. A year later, however, with the deadly attack on the marine headquarters in Beirut, we would get our first deadly lesson in the determination and abilities of anti-American crusaders.
Lebanon should have taught us that the traditional hardware of war was becoming obsolete in a world in which enemies increasingly utilized deception, guile, misdirection, and other guerilla tactics--not as an adjunct of traditional forces, but as a replacement for them. In the end, Reagan ordered all military forces out of Lebanon.
This new war is much harder. We are woefully deficient in human intelligence. We have not pivoted from the cold war to the new war. We don't have anybody cozying up to bin Laden. There aren't ship or troop movements to track by satellite. Determining what's actionable is a tough job. We now rely on interrogations, electronic intercepts, and, on rare occasions, human intelligence. Satellite photos won't show terrorists or their assets. It's a whole different game of intelligence gathering. There are no more double agents, and there is no such thing as infiltrating Al Qaeda--we did not know how to break into this crowd.
It has been alleged that the Bush administration cherry-picked the intelligence in order to go to war. I find the suggestion contemptible, particularly in light of the fact that Pres. Clinton's intelligence community thought it, and so did Prime Minister Blair's. I gave the president the benefit of the doubt on the wisdom of invading Iraq. Privately, I had my doubts about both the target & the tactics.
Has the invasion and occupation of Iraq made us safer at home? Can the hundreds of billions of dollars and the loss of thousands of lives be justified in terms of protecting America? Admittedly, the relationship between the Saddam regime, Al Qaeda, and 9/11 was tenuous, if at all. My public support was tempered by my private concern about troop levels. I never believed we started with the right number.
"I think in time [a self-governing Iraq] will occur. I don't think we should expect an immediate transition to a government that looks like ours, to a value system that necessarily reflects ours--there are unique cultural differences, historical differences, religious differences--but I think that even around those differences--the one centerpiece that is not different is the notion in the heart of all human beings to be free--and to determine their own future, their own fate."
If a Muslim country previously subjugated by a despot can, by the intervention of "the infidel Americans," be free to establish a legitimate form of self-government that offers a better life for its citizens, then we will be safer. In the battle for the hearts and minds of over a billion Muslims, we will have won a significant victory.
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The above quotations are from The Test of our Times: America Under Siege...And How We Can Be Safe Again, by Gov. Tom Ridge. Click here for other excerpts from The Test of our Times: America Under Siege...And How We Can Be Safe Again, by Gov. Tom Ridge. Click here for other excerpts by Tom Ridge. Click here for a profile of Tom Ridge.
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