But it pushed the same poison again in 2010. Typically, when someone from Washington talks about "immigration reform," they"re talking about amnesty. The "blueprint" presented by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York in April 2010 was just the same old Democrat call. He wanted illegals currently here to pay a fine and back taxes and then have a "provisional status" for eight years. Amnesty was and is always a terrible idea. Think about it-if you let it be known that there is a program whereby once you"re in the country you"ll be allowed to stay, what message does that send to someone contemplating an illegal border crossing? Get in at all costs! Once you"re here, you"ll be set. That"s been the case not just in America, where the 1986 amnesty law gave us triple the number of illegals over the course of the following twenty years, but also in Europe, where amnesty programs have produced similar unintended consequences. It"s just human nature-amnesty incentivizes illegal border crossing. It"s a carrot, not a stick. And amnesty would be especially disastrous when millions of Americans are looking for jobs.
President Obama"s immigration speech and Senator Schumer"s blueprint were both consistent with the message Obama allegedly gave to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona in a one-on-one meeting at the White House. According to Kyl, Obama told him the Democrats didn"t want his administration to secure the border because then Republicans wouldn"t negotiate on comprehensive immigration reform. What the president doesn"t seem to understand is that securing the border is not a political bargaining chip; it is a federal obligation and duty.
Securing the border is also a national-security issue and an important part of the war on terror. There are Syrians, Sudanese, Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Lebanese, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Saudis, Somalis, and Yemenis being caught trying to sneak across our border with Mexico-and I don"t think all these Muslims are coming to pick fruit or mow our lawns.
Arizona on the Front Lines What"s known in Arizona as Senate Bill 1070 (formally known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) has become a lightning rod in the national debate over illegal immigration. And Governor Jan Brewer, who stepped into the job when Janet Napolitano (who had previously vetoed similar measures) left Arizona to become secretary of homeland security, is bravely holding that light-ning rod despite the storm surrounding her. The fact of the matter is, Arizonans can"t afford the luxury of debating illegal immigration as an esoteric policy discussion-for them, it"s a matter of frontline border security. As the state with the highest incidence of illegal border crossings, Arizona has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants, and in the words of Governor Brewer, Arizonans "have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act. But decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation." Even Arizona"s Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords defended the law, saying her const.i.tuents are sick and tired of the federal government failing to protect the border and calling the current situation "completely unacceptable."
Let"s be clear on what Arizona"s controversial law actually does-it tasks Arizona law enforcement officers with . . . well, enforcing the law. Controversial, huh? Federal law requires certain aliens to register with the federal government and carry their registration doc.u.ments at all times. What the Arizona law does (at least the part that"s drawing so much attention) is obligate a law enforcement officer, when making a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, to make an attempt to determine a person"s immigration status if there is probable cause to suspect the person is an alien not in possession of the required legal doc.u.ments. Basically, it tasks state and local law enforcement with helping enforce federal immigration law. This is Arizona trying to step in and get the job done where the feds are not. It"s a strategy called "attrition through enforcement," and to me it sounds an awful lot like plain old law enforcement.
President Obama doesn"t see it this way and said, "Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. . . . And that includes . . . the recent efforts in Arizona." By calling Arizona irresponsible, he turned the truth on its head. Arizona was the one acting responsibly here, the one being a grown-up, by simply trying to enforce our existing immigration laws.
President Obama"s criticism of Arizona contradicted his own 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, which explicitly states that our borders "must be secured," recognizing that "uncontrolled drug trafficking contributes to violence, kidnapping, robberies, and other crimes throughout the country, but especially in border areas especially in border areas." (Emphasis added.) This was precisely what the Arizona law was designed to deal with.
Drug trafficking has made Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the United States, second in the world to Mexico City. But just as illegals wouldn"t come if we didn"t give them jobs, they wouldn"t come if we didn"t provide a market for their drugs. The 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health found that twenty-one million Americans (ages twelve and older) admitted using illegal drugs within the last month.
Instead of securing the border, the Obama administration put up signs in Arizona warning Americans not to travel on their own roads, in their own country, because of drug-related violence. The signs read "DANGER-PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED." The administration surrendered sovereignty over our territory, ceding it to lawless thugs, as if we were Somalia or Yemen.
How Dare You Enforce the Law!
Governor Brewer asked President Obama for more troops for the border, and his response was to send a busload of lawyers instead. The Arizona law finally pushed the federal government into taking action-unfortunately, it decided to sue Arizona! On July 6, 2010, the Department of Justice filed suit against Arizona in U.S. District Court asking that the Arizona law be declared unconst.i.tutional. Immediately after it was signed by Brewer, Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder began criticizing the law. It wasn"t long before they reluctantly had to admit they"d not bothered to actually read it yet. Meanwhile, the president characterized it as "a misdirected expression of frustration over our broken immigration system." I consider his law-suit a misdirected expression of frustration over Arizona"s calling him out on that broken system. The lawsuit wastes taxpayer money and government resources that should be used to go after illegals, not the American victims of government abdication.
The Arizona law is const.i.tutional because it is consistent with federal law, and the state was simply conducting "concurrent enforcement." A state law does not violate the Const.i.tution"s supremacy clause unless it conflicts with federal law. For instance, if Arizona were to declare that anyone crossing the border could become a citizen in a month, such a law would violate the supremacy clause because it would contradict federal law. Holding illegals accountable to the law is, by its very nature, simpatico with the law.
As a former governor, I can imagine how furious Governor Brewer was to hear about the lawsuit from an interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave in Ecuador, rather than from the courtesy of a phone call from the Justice Department. Justice rejected the State Department"s request that it announce the lawsuit before Secretary Clinton"s Latin America trip.
In one of the most outrageous-and bizarre-episodes in all of America"s diplomatic history, a.s.sistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, during a sit-down with the Chinese about human rights in May 2010, spoke unabashedly about the Arizona law as if it were somehow a.n.a.logous to China"s horrific record of evil toward its own citizens-as if asking someone for identification, when the police have stopped him for a valid reason, is like mowing down an unarmed civilian with a tank or forcing a woman pregnant with her second child to have an abortion. It seemed like a Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live or or Daily Show Daily Show satire, but Posner was serious. It made me wonder if Posner isn"t an alien himself-an alien from another planet! satire, but Posner was serious. It made me wonder if Posner isn"t an alien himself-an alien from another planet!
Perhaps the most telling statement, you might even call it a Freudian slip, in this whole ordeal came from the office of Mexican president Felipe Calderon: "The Mexican government condemns the approval of the law" and "the criminalization of migration criminalization of migration, far from contributing to collaboration between Mexico and the state of Arizona, represents an obstacle to solving the shared problems of the border region." (Emphasis added.) President Calderon makes an interesting choice of words here-it"s not "migration" that Arizona has criminalized; it"s illegal illegal migration (which was criminalized by the federal government) that Arizona is seeking to curb by simply enforcing the law. This is a distinction Calderon and many others seem unable to comprehend. migration (which was criminalized by the federal government) that Arizona is seeking to curb by simply enforcing the law. This is a distinction Calderon and many others seem unable to comprehend.
Arizona is not the only state that is fed up. In the first quarter of 2010, almost 1,200 bills and resolutions dealing with immigration were proposed in forty-five states. In fact, a recent New York Times New York Times/ CBS News poll showed that 89 percent of Americans believe either that our immigration system needs some "fundamental changes" or that it should be completely rebuilt. But states shouldn"t have to do this. It is one of the few things the national government is actually supposed to do, and yet, despite how big the government has gotten and how much they spend, the feds can"t seem to take responsibility. Instead of policing the states, they should police those who are actually breaking the law.
Secure the Borders In 2006, Congress voted to build a fence along our border with Mexico, and even though President George W. Bush began work on it before he left office, President Obama halted that work in 2010. We must finish the fence. With apologies to Kevin Costner, if we build it, they won"t won"t come. come.
In May 2010, President Obama agreed to send up to 1,200 National Guard forces for a year to support our border patrol. This was nowhere near enough, and their mission should not have been limited to a year. Under President Bush"s "Operation Jump Start," we had six thousand National Guard at the border, which is what Governor Brewer asked President Obama for.
But securing our border is a broader concept than simply preventing people from crossing. It includes discouraging people from approaching the border in the first place. Illegals must view our border not as an obstacle to overcome but as a dead end with no opportunity for them on the other side. So securing our border means securing our workplaces. Illegals are doing many of our jobs only because the federal government isn"t doing its job.
If illegals can"t find work, those who are here will leave, and those who would consider coming will stay home. We must enforce the law, and we must go after employers with hefty fines and prison time for repeat offenders. As one attorney who represents illegal immigrants said, "It"s like our border has two signs: "Keep Out" and "Help Wanted."" We can"t have it both ways.
In November 2009, President Obama rescinded President George H. W. Bush"s "No Match" rule, under which the Department of Home-land Security tracked false Social Security numbers to find illegals and then required employers to dismiss them.
In 2008, under President George W. Bush, workplace arrests totaled about 6,000 in FY 2008. But under President Obama, these arrests fell to just 900 in FY 2010.
President Bush replaced "catch and release" with "detention and removal" after workplace raids. But President Obama has brought back "catch and release," after which illegals just disappear. He has been conducting payroll audits instead of raids. That means illegals sometimes lose their jobs, but they don"t get deported; they just find other jobs.
Even when we try to bring illegals to justice, we are hopelessly ineffective. About 60 percent of illegals who are not held in jail don"t show up for their hearing. About 90 percent of illegals who lose in court don"t appeal the decision-why bother when it"s so easy to just leave the area and move somewhere else in this country?
Americans Need Jobs Too The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that 1.2 million illegal Mexican immigrants went home between 2006 and 2009, more than double the number who went home between 2002 and 2005.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that illegal Mexican immigration in 2008-9 was one-fourth that in 2004-5.
The number of border apprehensions, which is used to determine how many people are trying to come into the country illegally, was down 23 percent in 2008-9 compared to 2007-8.
But as the economy improves, they"ll try to come back. That"s why we can"t wait to secure the border.
The Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurial activity, found that in the last decade, immigrants started one-quarter of all new American high-tech companies. We should allow more foreign students receiving science degrees to stay here. As I said at the outset, the problem isn"t immigrants; it"s immigrants that we don"t choose. This is our country; we have to decide who comes here and who stays here.
We need fewer people looking for low-skilled work and more people who not only can perform high-skilled work themselves but also will create high-skilled jobs for Americans. This is a notion that goes back to early America, when George Washington wrote in a 1794 letter to John Adams that there was no particular need to encourage immigration, "except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions."
California is a perfect example of what happens when we are overrun by uneducated, unskilled people who are a burden rather than an a.s.set. In 1970, California had the seventh-most-educated workforce in this country. By 2008, with its immigrant population having tripled, California was dead last, and large numbers of U.S.-born Hispanic students remain "English language learners" through most of their school years due to insufficient academic and language skills.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) issued a report in July 2010 ent.i.tled "The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers," which found that illegal immigration costs all of us $113 billion a year, with $84.2 billion coming from state and local governments and $28.6 billion from the federal government. The largest cost is $52 billion for education. Among our states, the largest shares were borne by California at $21.8 billion, New York at $9.5 billion, and Texas at $8.9 billion. The average American household pays $1,117 per year toward the cost of illegal aliens in our country.
If You"re Stuck in a Hole, the First Thing to Do Is to Stop Digging Immigration reform is not easy and will require a multip.r.o.nged strategy. As a matter of public policy, it"s like the Gordian knot-you can"t untie it, and if you cut through it in one reckless stroke, you"re going to have a lot of loose ends on your hands. An estimated eleven to thirteen million illegal aliens are already living among us. But we can"t even begin to untie this knotty mess until we secure the border and stop the constant flow of illegal crossings adding to the problem. When you can"t control entry, you don"t have an immigration system; you have a free-for-all.
There is no single, clear answer to the illegal immigration problem, but there is a single, clear first step-secure the border. Only then can true immigration reform take place.
CHAPTER NINE.
Bullies on the Playground Understand Only One Thing We Need a Strong Approach to Terrorism
We all remember exactly where we were on September 11, 2001. For most of us, that day was spent glued to the TV with family or maybe coworkers as unspeakable horror unfolded. But I remember just as clearly where I was on September 11, 2002.
On that fall morning, I stood on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol to address a group of citizens gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of 9/11 and honor those lost at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a nondescript field in rural Pennsylvania. More than anything I said that morning, I remember the looks on the faces of those who attended, for they were neither partisan politicos nor folks with an agenda-the usual crowd in the halls of state government. Instead, they were simply Americans who had come together to share in a moment of remembrance and find strength in unity.
But I also remember how their faces changed as I told them about a guy named Richard Cyril Rescorla, better known as "Rick," who died in the World Trade Center. If ever a man was destined to leave this earth a hero, it was Rick Rescorla. He had served in the British military before immigrating to America and joining the U.S. Army to serve in Vietnam. He fought with distinction at Ia Drang, a famously b.l.o.o.d.y battle that was chronicled in the book and film We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young. But Rick did not leave his devotion to duty on a foreign battlefield.
As chief of security for Morgan Stanley"s offices in the World Trade Center, he spent much of his time a.s.sessing the risk terrorists might pose to those under his watch. As early as 1992, he warned authorities that the supporting pillars in the center"s bas.e.m.e.nt parking garage presented a prime target for attack. A year later, you"ll recall, his warning proved all too prophetic.
Over the next decade, Rick"s evacuation plans became the stuff of legend at Morgan Stanley. He insisted that everyone, from the stuffed-shirt executives to the messengers in bike shorts, learn and practice evacuation procedures on a regular basis. As a veteran of armed conflict he understood that a plan could be effectively executed in the confusion of battle only if it had been practiced in peace and reinforced until it became almost a matter of muscle memory. But more important, he understood the essential fact: The terrorists who failed in 1993 would try again.
So Rick Rescorla was prepared when the first plane struck on 9/11. While the rest of us watched without fully understanding at first and authorities urged everyone to remain calm and stay put, he ignored the ill-advised warnings and, according to plan, briskly led more than two thousand Morgan Stanley employees on twenty floors of Tower 2 down the stairs and out of the building to safety. He also made sure that the one thousand Morgan Stanley employees in nearby Building 5 were evacuated. Throughout the operation, Rick sang songs over his bullhorn, including "G.o.d Bless America," the hymn of his adopted country.
Once on the street, mission completed, most men would have called it a day. But Rick Rescorla was not like most men. He couldn"t abide the possibility that someone-one of his flock-was overlooked and still inside. After seeing that his charges on the street stayed together and moved safely away from the tower, he headed back in to climb the stairs and check for stragglers. He was never again seen alive.
I told this story because it had moved me when I first heard it; it moves me to this day. It moved the crowd in Little Rock. But I could see on their faces a shift from a mood of mourning to something more. I said that the flames of the World Trade Center-the very flames that killed Rick Rescorla and so many others-achieved more than the terrorists could ever have antic.i.p.ated. Those very flames, I went on, caused our great American melting pot to boil over. Whenever those waters have boiled over, throughout our history, they have snuffed out the flames of tyranny, hatred, and evil, even when they seemed to burn unchecked. At this point in my talk, I could see in the faces before me an obvious strength and resolve that reminded me that it is not in the DNA of Americans to live our lives as victims. We never have, and I pray that we never will. In fact, at the time I was addressing those folks in 2002, our nation was already mobilizing, ready to take the fight to the terrorists where they live.
Right now, I don"t feel as hopeful as I did that day. I have to ask myself this question: If Rick Rescorla were here today, how could I explain to him how and why we"ve dropped the ball in the global war on terror? How would I explain to this hero-a man who not only saw imminent danger on the horizon but also devised and executed a simple yet effective survival strategy-that afterward, even with all the resources our nation can bring to bear, we have not followed suit?
PC Is Not a Strategy Are we even marginally still engaged in a war on terror? In many ways, it ended when President Obama took office. Was there some final victory that I somehow didn"t hear about? No, he just changed the name of our efforts to "overseas contingency operations," which doesn"t make sense as English, let alone as military strategy. If the man had been in the White House on June 6, 1944, we might now know D-Day as "A Day at the Beach."
So this is the politically correct order of the day. We"re not supposed to talk about "terror," for one thing, and we should especially refrain from mentioning that it is radical Islamists who are coming after us. On November 10, 2009, the president spoke at the Fort Hood memorial service to honor the thirteen soldiers (and the unborn child of one of them) who had been murdered by Major Nidal Hasan as an act of jihad. Astonishingly, as if completely ignoring the motivation behind this tragedy, he never used such words as Islam Islam or or Islamist Islamist or or Muslim Muslim. Does ignoring the gorilla in the room mean that he"s really not there?
A few months later, in May 2010, Texas congressman Lamar Smith tried to get Attorney General Eric Holder to admit that a belief in radical Islam was behind Hasan"s attack, as well as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab"s failed attempt to explode a bomb in his "Under-roos" on a plane to Detroit the Christmas before and Faisal Shahzad"s fizzled bomb during rush hour in Times Square earlier that month. Here is an excerpt from the congressional hearing: CONGRESSMAN SMITH: Are you uncomfortable attributing any of their actions to radical Islam? It sounds like it. Are you uncomfortable attributing any of their actions to radical Islam? It sounds like it.ATTARNEY GENERAL HOLDER: I don"t want to say anything negative about the religion. . . . I don"t want to say anything negative about the religion. . . .SMITH: I"m not talking about religion. I"m talking about radical Islam. I"m not talking about the general religion. . . . I"m not talking about religion. I"m talking about radical Islam. I"m not talking about the general religion. . . .HOLDER: I certainly think that it"s possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact on people like Mr. Shahzad. I certainly think that it"s possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact on people like Mr. Shahzad.
This was not just a disagreement about semantics. The guys they"re talking about weren"t trying to blow things up (themselves included) because they were pyromaniacs; they were engaged in their own personal acts of jihad. We can only thank the Lord that they were so inept, because we were failed by the system we trusted to catch them before they could act on their hatred. If they"d had the skills to match that hatred, we would have suffered scores of casualties.
The current bizarre taboo against identifying our enemy by name reminds me of our deference to the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammad. We"re so afraid of offending the people who are h.e.l.lbent on wiping us out that we are now playing by their rules. The naming taboo also goes to the heart of our ability to prosecute this war, a war that Osama bin Laden declared on us in 1996 and 1998, before his attacks (or overseas contingency operations) on our emba.s.sies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, on the USS Cole Cole in 2000, and on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. in 2000, and on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001.
As the frustrated and incredulous Congressman Smith remarked to Attorney General Holder, "I don"t know why the administration has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious. . . . If you can"t name the enemy, then you"re going to have a hard time trying to respond to them." Exactly! This example of PC (like so many) isn"t just silly; it"s downright dangerous, and also reminiscent of our failure to recognize the seriousness of the Islamic terror threat after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Rick Rescorla, though he was nowhere near the halls of national power or the inner sanctum of the intelligence community, clearly saw the writing on the wall. He correctly inferred that this failed attack was in fact a first strike in a larger offensive. How could so many others not see that?
The Roots of Terrorism Perhaps President Obama and his administration are so wary of naming the enemy because they are fundamentally unable to distinguish between the ancient religion of Islam and the radical Islam of our day-a totalitarian ideology like its predecessors in the twentieth century, communism and fascism. While traditional Islam is not my particular cup of religious tea, I can accept it generally as a historical set of beliefs that brings purpose and unity to millions of peaceful worshipers around the globe. It is clear that most followers of Islam are as revolted by terror as we are (and, in some cases, as likely to be attacked and killed).
But radical Islam is an altogether different thing: It isn"t as much a religion as it is a psychosis. Don"t get me wrong: All religions must be vigilant against radical perversion, as Christians learned, for instance, from the medieval and Spanish inquisitions or the Salem witch trials. But to confuse the radical with the righteous in any religion, or to lump them together, is a tragic mistake. In the Obama administration"s fear of naming the obvious, it is a tactical error.
To fight them, you have to know precisely how they think. The terrorists who scheme against us follow the ideology of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, the Karl Marx of Islamic extremism. His writings, which are the intellectual foundation of the movement, include the following tenet: "A Muslim has no nationality except his belief." If that"s the case, the radical Islamist can have no loyalty to the United States or any other country. He is loyal only to the jihad that plots to establish an Islamist theocracy, or religion-run government, that will eventually rule a worldwide caliphate. This is a breathtaking ambition, but Qutb and his followers mean it. Political divisions are irrelevant, because lines on a map can be wiped forever away with a blood-soaked rag. This is the root explanation of why the war on terror is infinitely more complex than any prior war, in which opposing nations typically fought each other on battlefields. Terror, by contrast, happens at home. In almost any nation. Anywhere.
Although Qutb was executed by President Na.s.ser in 1966, he and his ideas have remained alive to haunt us through his followers. He has inspired terrorists from bin Laden to the radical American-born imam Anwar al-Awlaki, now in hiding in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, in turn, inspired Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and Shahzad. He has argued that "jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim." That"s a pretty clear renunciation of any claim to his citizenship, I"d think. Yet when he was added to the CIA"s list of terrorists being targeted by our drones, the New York Times New York Times denounced this move as a planned execution by the United States of "one of its own citizens far from a combat zone." I guess they just don"t get it: Yemen is a combat zone. It is, in fact, the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln asked, "Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" In any event, the CIA has reason to believe that al-Awlaki has gone well beyond being a wily agitator who preaches that attacking America is a "religious duty." Evidently, he is now actively engaged in plotting with AQAP. denounced this move as a planned execution by the United States of "one of its own citizens far from a combat zone." I guess they just don"t get it: Yemen is a combat zone. It is, in fact, the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln asked, "Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" In any event, the CIA has reason to believe that al-Awlaki has gone well beyond being a wily agitator who preaches that attacking America is a "religious duty." Evidently, he is now actively engaged in plotting with AQAP.
Sadly, while we"ve become used to packing our Ziploc bags with miniature bottles of shampoo and taking off our shoes at airport security gates, some of us still have not intellectually grasped whom and what we are fighting. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush was only half right when he said that we have to fight them there so that we won"t have to fight them here. In a war without borders, the truth is that we have to fight them here, there, and everywhere, even if walking sock-footed through airports and having our belongings rustled about by TSA workers does less to deter terrorism than to inconvenience travelers.
It has not helped the war that, after 9/11, too many senators and congressmen shamefully saw homeland-security funds as a great source of local pork rather than as limited, precious resources to be allocated based purely on risk. It also hasn"t helped that too many in the administration are like the sputtering attorney general or Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who has referred to the war on terror as a series of "man-made disasters."
Politicians and pundits alike are fond of repeating that 9/11 "changed everything." It has certainly changed some things, but it hasn"t changed enough of them so that we can effectively fight our enemies.
The Wrong Paradigms For one thing, we have continued to try to fit the round peg of Islamic terrorism into the square hole of our traditional criminal justice system. Remember, we didn"t choose this particular enemy or this new mode of warfare, but we must adjust our response to the circ.u.mstances. Nothing in the Const.i.tution prevents us from defending ourselves and our country. Or, as Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson once put it, "If the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the const.i.tutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."
That"s close to what Attorney General Holder is doing by pursuing a way to expand the public-safety exception under the Miranda Miranda decision, which requires that criminal suspects be read their rights. He is not only wasting his time but also jeopardizing our safety. We don"t need an improved public-safety exception because, in the war against terrorists, we don"t need decision, which requires that criminal suspects be read their rights. He is not only wasting his time but also jeopardizing our safety. We don"t need an improved public-safety exception because, in the war against terrorists, we don"t need Miranda Miranda at all. He also wants to delay the initial hearing for a captured terrorist suspect. at all. He also wants to delay the initial hearing for a captured terrorist suspect.
These ideas are completely wrongheaded. The criminal justice system that the Obama administration is tinkering with was designed to keep the peace, not prosecute a war. It"s like zoo officials planning an extreme home makeover on the aviary to make room for the new elephant. We can"t successfully wage this war if we use the wrong paradigm. Miranda Miranda was intended to yield admissible evidence that would be upheld in order to gain convictions. What"s the connection here? What we need is usable intelligence that will keep us safe from these whack-jobs who leap up from their prayer rugs with a renewed zeal to sever our heads. was intended to yield admissible evidence that would be upheld in order to gain convictions. What"s the connection here? What we need is usable intelligence that will keep us safe from these whack-jobs who leap up from their prayer rugs with a renewed zeal to sever our heads.
If someone steals a watch from a store in Times Square, he"s a criminal who is ent.i.tled by law to Miranda Miranda warnings whether he"s a Christian, a Muslim, or an atheist. But when a radical Islamist tries to detonate a bomb in Times Square, he"s an unlawful enemy combatant. warnings whether he"s a Christian, a Muslim, or an atheist. But when a radical Islamist tries to detonate a bomb in Times Square, he"s an unlawful enemy combatant. Miranda Miranda is irrelevant because he"s attacking the country as part of a war, not because he"s a Muslim. When our soldiers pulled Saddam Hussein out of the hidey-hole he"d fashioned near Tikrit in 2003, the message they delivered was not "You have the right to remain silent." Be it in Tikrit or Topeka, a terrorist is not a criminal; he is an enemy. We should be consistent in treating him as such. is irrelevant because he"s attacking the country as part of a war, not because he"s a Muslim. When our soldiers pulled Saddam Hussein out of the hidey-hole he"d fashioned near Tikrit in 2003, the message they delivered was not "You have the right to remain silent." Be it in Tikrit or Topeka, a terrorist is not a criminal; he is an enemy. We should be consistent in treating him as such.
Holder"s efforts are only part of the ongoing legal confusion. There is conflict among lawyers at the State Department, Justice Department, and Pentagon over the limits of executive counterterrorism powers. The administration wants to rely more heavily on the Geneva Conventions, but those agreements never envisioned this type of warfare. Another dangerously wrong paradigm! The war on terror is challenging enough without our tying one hand (or both) behind our backs.
Yet another ill-advised paradigm is the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to control how we monitor terrorist communications. FISA was pa.s.sed in 1978 in response to possibly questionable government surveillance of members of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. But the pendulum swings. Today, New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly has properly called FISA "an unnecessarily protracted, risk-averse process." That means we are erring on the side of overprotecting e-mails and cell-phone calls while putting our lives in danger. Either FISA must be rewritten to address the current situation or a separate set of rules should govern our conduct of the war on terror.
When Will We Stop Underestimating the Enemy?
Even though Major Hasan"s d.a.m.ning e-mail correspondence with jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki was in hand, for some reason the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the army decided to not even bother to investigate him. Their negligence let him go on to murder thirteen and wound thirty-one of his fellow soldiers, including an innocent unborn child. What were our officials thinking?
Here"s another unbelievable anecdote: Before Abdulmutallab"s underwear bomb at Christmas 2009, our officials thought Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula didn"t have the ability to attack us in the homeland. We did know that they wanted revenge for our attacks in Yemen, but we a.s.sumed that they could mount only regional responses. As John Brennan, President Obama"s counterterrorism czar, would admit later, "We didn"t know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here."
But why didn"t we know? Isn"t that precisely why we"ve spent tens of billions since 9/11 and established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)? The aim was to figure out not just the aspirations of terrorists but also their capabilities. Obviously, we"re not going to go on high alert for something we"re convinced they can"t do. You"ll recall that Rick Rescorla was proved right within a year of his warning about those garage support pillars.
How many failed attempts by inept jihadists will it take to make us realize that the enemy is already here?
That"s at least one lesson of Faisal Shahzad"s Times Square bomb attempt in the spring of 2010. That time we were blindsided by the Pakistani Taliban, who wanted payback for our killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in the summer of 2009. As with the underwear bomber, we didn"t see that one coming. Same excuse, believe it or not: Officials explained haplessly that they hadn"t believed the Pakistanis had the ability to attack us at home.
Abdulmutallab"s inept.i.tude in trying to ignite his underwear bomb or Shahzad"s dumb move of locking his getaway car"s keys in the vehicle he meant to explode might remind us of Karl Marx"s warning: History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Comparing the 9/11 tragedy with the two recent farces could be misleading, though. We view these terrorists as "the gang that couldn"t shoot straight" at our own peril. Any laughter is not real mirth, since we should remember that at any time, perhaps on another clear blue September morning, the line between farce and tragedy could be revealed to be as thin as a skillfully placed detonator cord. Not all of these radical zombies will be as stupid and inept as the "fruit of the loon" bomber or the "propane tankmeister."
Even when terrorists fail so miserably, we have to take them seriously-gravely seriously. They"re like c.o.c.kroaches. For every one we see, we should a.s.sume that there are many more lurking in the darkest corners. We have to race forward-against time, partisan sniping, bureaucratic infighting, and political correctness-to get to them before they get to us, and before they once again get it right.
The Warning Signs Are There The story isn"t over yet, and unfortunately, the more you dig, the worse it gets.
Prior to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab"s attempt to blow up that flight to Detroit, we had been given specific intelligence that Al Qaeda was planning an attack using a Nigerian. To be fair, there are lots of Nigerians, so that"s not much help. But wait. Abdulmutallab"s father appeared at our Nigerian emba.s.sy to report that his son had become a religious extremist and had moved to Yemen. h.e.l.lo! I don"t have formal training in threat a.s.sessment, and you might not either, but I think we can agree that when a guy"s own father fears that he"s a threat, we should consider him a threat. Nor was his son just any old Nigerian: He had a visa that allowed him to enter the United States. Do you see a problem here? These are neon-bright dots just begging to be connected. They weren"t.
Just a few months later, Faisal Shahzad"s capture as he tried to flee the country after his Times Square fiasco further ill.u.s.trated the need to build as much redundancy as possible into the system. A Customs and Border Protection center in Virginia double-checked Shahzad"s name on the final pa.s.senger list for his intended getaway flight, but he did not yet appear on the no-fly list of Emirates Airline. It seems that whenever there is a close call like this, we discover things that don"t make sense-like airlines being given twenty-four hours, an absurdly long time, to check flight-list updates. The rule was immediately changed to two hours, but when a high-priority name is added, the window should be no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. It was also inexcusable, and I was amazed to see reported, that the government, so long after 9/11, had not yet a.s.sumed responsibility for checking the no-fly lists kept by airlines. When Shahzad was arrested, this takeover was still in its test phase for domestic airlines and hadn"t even begun for international airlines.
We nabbed Shahzad only because of a phone number he had given customs officials when he returned from Pakistan in February 2010. Because the number was put in a database, he was pulled aside under a government policy-inst.i.tuted in response to Abdulmutallab"s failed bombing attempt the previous Christmas-requiring stepped-up screenings for all pa.s.sengers from fourteen countries, including Pakistan. Amazingly, that program was quickly canceled. Would Shahzad have been questioned anyway, or was he caught only because of that policy? I don"t know, but it seems to me that that short-lived program should have been a keeper. It was pure luck that Shahzad returned from the Middle East not long after the Abdulmutallab event. Eventually, luck runs out.
A New York Times New York Times profile of Shahzad contained a tantalizing nugget: A man who bought a condo from the Times Square bomber in Norwalk, Connecticut, back in May 2004 reported that the FBI"s Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him soon afterward about Shahzad. What exactly did the government know about him six years before his failed attack? More specifically, why was he on their radar screen in the first place, and why was he then (apparently) taken off it? How in the world was he allowed to slip through the cracks, very nearly at the expense of innocent lives? profile of Shahzad contained a tantalizing nugget: A man who bought a condo from the Times Square bomber in Norwalk, Connecticut, back in May 2004 reported that the FBI"s Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him soon afterward about Shahzad. What exactly did the government know about him six years before his failed attack? More specifically, why was he on their radar screen in the first place, and why was he then (apparently) taken off it? How in the world was he allowed to slip through the cracks, very nearly at the expense of innocent lives?
Is this just an extremely rare occurrence? Hardly. On May 18, 2010, just two weeks after the Times Square attempt, the uncla.s.sified summary of a report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed fourteen points of failure related specifically to Abdulmutallab"s attempted Christmas bombing. They included "human errors, technical problems, systemic obstacles, a.n.a.lytical misjudgments, and competing priorities." I find this a sad and sobering a.s.sessment of how much our government had still not fixed more than eight years after 9/11.
The committee spread the blame around. It faulted the State Department for not revoking Abdulmutallab"s visa and the FBI for not being able to access the reports about him. It found that the CIA, the NCTC, and the National Security Agency were responsible for various failures in collecting, distributing, and a.n.a.lyzing information. To take just one example, both the CIA and the NCTC ignored our Nigerian emba.s.sy"s recommendation to put Abdulmutallab on the no-fly list. Meanwhile, the former Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, was driving wherever he went, having been deported from the United States after being caught on the no-fly list. And sweet little Alyssa Thomas, a six-year-old girl from Westlake, Ohio, remains on the list for reasons unknown, despite her parents" repeated appeals of that status. Curiouser and curiouser.
In conclusion, the committee report noted that the entire intelligence community had so narrowly focused on the threat Arabian Al-Qaeda posed to U.S. interests in Yemen that it had virtually ignored the potential for an attack on the homeland from there.
Two days after the uncla.s.sified summary was released, director of national intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair resigned. Three strikes-Hasan, Abdulmutallab, Shahzad-and he was out. At least that"s one step in the right direction.
Turf Battles News a.n.a.lysis of Blair"s resignation highlighted a serious security problem. Just as there were crippling conflicts between the FBI and the CIA before 9/11, turf battles among many intelligence agencies are ongoing. This remains true even though Blair"s DNI position was established in 2004 specifically to head up and unify all sixteen agencies, including the CIA. In the beginning, Blair a.s.serted the right to choose the top intelligence official in each of our emba.s.sies overseas, a decision traditionally made by the CIA station chief at each posting. When CIA director Leon Panetta objected, the White House sided with him against the newly appointed DNI. You can bet the heads of other agencies read a message there, a message that said that the White House would be calling the shots.
Meanwhile, the creation of several new bureaucracies has in no way cleared up exactly who is responsible for what. (Does anyone really expect bureaucracies to clear up rather than obfuscate?) The NCTC, also established in 2004, was intended to coordinate intelligence, mostly from overseas. Now it is seeking Obama"s nod for increased authority to do a.n.a.lysis domestically, thus putting it on FBI turf. At the same time, officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seek greater authority to train local law enforcement and citizens to spot indications of potential violent extremism. Such an emphasis on a more local, decentralized approach could conflict with the NCTC"s national effort.
Yet another approach has been suggested by Michael Sheehan, former counterterrorism chief for the State Department and the New York Police Department (NYPD). He would take the basic idea of the DHS plan but make it more structured, powerful, and independent. Essentially, he wants other cities to do what the NYPD has done: set up its own intelligence and counterterrorism units that use informants and undercover officers, much as other units fight drugs and organized crime. The NYPD is flexible enough to work with the FBI on occasion but often works on its own.
I say, since we need as many working channels as possible, let"s work both top down and ground up. There"s a potential for stepping on one another"s toes, maybe, but I"d rather have the good guys b.u.mping into each other than missing leads because everyone was more focused on protecting their own turf. Washington officials might be in the best position to connect the dots coming from all over the world, while locals can concentrate on providing as many dots as possible. It"s better to have different perspectives and skill sets with overlapping jurisdictions than dangerous gaps in our coverage-better to have plots uncovered by several means than by none.
We Must Look in Other Directions In addition to the threat of terrorists shooting us or blowing us up, like the three radical extremists we"ve been discussing, the true stuff of nightmares is that all sorts of other scenarios for attacks on our homeland abound. For example, as former CIA officer Charles Faddis has written, there is a real threat to our nuclear power plants. He cites the example of Sharif Mobley of New Jersey, who worked at five plants before allegedly joining Al Qaeda in Yemen. Since he was a maintenance worker, you might think he doesn"t have information that would help terrorists mount a successful attack. You would be very wrong.
As Faddis explains, to destroy a plant you don"t need access to its core, just to its cooling system, in which most components are unprotected. If a cooling system is disabled, heat will rise and melt the reactor, causing a partial meltdown of the plant. Think The China Syndrome The China Syndrome. Since the security at all of our nuclear power plants is pretty much the same, Faddis warns, we now have to change the protocol at all of them, not just those where Mobley worked.
Another threat-the risk of cyberattacks that could turn our own technology against us-has been outlined by Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar to Presidents Clinton and Bush 43. While noting that both the Pentagon"s Cyber Command and the DHS are taking strong steps to defend the government against such attacks, he warns that they are not doing enough to protect our civilian infrastructure. He also believes that the Pentagon has focused too much on its offensive war capacity to the detriment of its defensive capabilities.
Clarke predicts that America would fare far worse than Russia or China in a cyberwar. Apocalyptically, he imagines that our banking system, power grids, and air and rail systems could be completely shut down, while our oil pipelines and chemical plants could be destroyed in explosions. All it would take to inflict absolute chaos on our lives and economy, in this scenario, would be some clever computer hacking. (I"m a believer: If I ever lost the use of just my ever-reliable MacBook, my life would certainly be chaos!) Since we are a vast, rich, technologically advanced society, there are many other avenues of attack here for creative terrorists; we have a lot to defend on many levels. To date, for example, we haven"t done nearly enough to guard against chemical and biological attacks, to protect our drinking water, or to secure our ports. Every school, shopping mall, sports stadium, place of worship, and means of public transportation offers a potential target.
The War Abroad But the threats to the homeland, even as we remain on alert, will not go away unless we eradicate them at their source. We cannot give up on the wars in the Middle East until we"ve definitively finished the job there.
In Afghanistan, we seem to be darned if we do, darned if we don"t. Some Afghans support the Taliban against us because they believe the propaganda that the United States wants to occupy their country long term. Ironically, others fear just the opposite: that we"ll leave, allowing the Taliban to return to power. For them, working against us means eventually being on the winning side. That"s kind of like paying "protection money" to the Mafia in the neighborhood; you don"t want to, but not doing so would wind up being most costly.
Then there"s the complicating factor of Obama"s announced time-table. In Iraq, it made sense to set a timetable because it forced the Iraqi government to pull itself together and function, knowing we were going to leave it to its own devices. But that tactic can"t work in Afghanistan, because there isn"t enough of a central government to prod. Nor is there the infrastructure and educated middle cla.s.s that exist in Iraq. Many of our troops in Afghanistan write home that life around them is so primitive they feel as if they"re back in biblical times. In 2005, when I visited both countries, I was shocked by the obvious contrast. Despite the scars of war, Iraq clearly has all the ingredients in place for becoming a successful economy and nation. Afghanistan, on the other hand, reminded me of photos from the surface of the moon! In terms of the overall culture as I experienced it, I was thinking Flintstones Flintstones.
Our success in Iraq was propelled by the troop surge, but an important factor was that the population turned against Al Qaeda, which they saw as a brutal, foreign force beholden to an extremist ideology. In much of Afghanistan, however, the Taliban is local and less feared and resented.
The tactic of a troop surge cannot be as effective in Afghanistan as in Iraq because, when we make military progress against the Taliban, President Karzai does not, or cannot, find competent officials to take hold of the cleared territory. Nor do we get a comparable "surge" in the number of honest, well-trained civil servants and police. So we"re left with two kinds of failure: Our military successes create a vacuum of authority that is either quickly filled by the returning Taliban or taken over by warlords or illegitimate officials whom the Afghans see as corrupt in the vein of Tony Soprano.
Kandahar Province is theoretically run by Karzai"s thuggish brother as a representative of the central government, but the Taliban is very powerful there. In a survey taken there in April 2010, more than half of the respondents viewed the Taliban as "incorruptible," about four out of five considered Taliban adherents to be "brothers" who would stop fighting if they just had jobs, and more than 90 percent felt it would make more sense to negotiate with the Taliban than to continue the fighting.
Compare that with Amba.s.sador Karl Eikenberry"s statement to President Obama on November 6, 2009, that President Karzai is "not an adequate partner." Actually, that was an understatement: The man is not just inadequate; he"s a negative. I don"t think you"ll find even 5 percent in Kabul who would call him "incorruptible." (And they"re probably on the take.) Our job is made even more difficult because he is such a dismal and counterproductive (alleged) partner.