Senator John Kerry is speaking today on the topic of Homeland and National Security, what the Bush Administration and their Republican enablers in Congress have failed to do and what Democrats WILL do to really begin to protect America. This speech is taking place at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass.
The Republicans have, once again, decided to go on the offensive and try and convince Americans that they are protecting the American Homeland by waging war in Iraq. They conceive of the effort to stop terrorism as an active military campaign that is waged, primarily, on foreign soil.
President Bush, in remarks delivered on Tuesday in front of the Military Officers Association of America in Washington DC claimed these goals for the "Global War on Terror":
Our strategy for combating terrorism has five basic elements:
First, we're determined to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur. So we're taking the fight to the enemy. The best way to protect America is to stay on the offense. Since 9/11, our coalition has captured or killed al Qaeda managers and operatives, and scores of other terrorists across the world. The enemy is living under constant pressure, and we intend to keep it that way -- and this adds to our security. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it's harder for them to plan and execute new attacks.
We're also fighting the enemy here at home. We've given our law enforcement and intelligence professionals the tools they need to stop the terrorists in our midst. We passed the Patriot Act to break down the wall that prevented law enforcement and intelligence from sharing vital information. We created the Terrorist Surveillance Program to monitor the communications between al Qaeda commanders abroad and terrorist operatives within our borders. If al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why, in order to stop attacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Bush and his Republican backers in the Congress conceive of the effort to combat the spread of terrorism as something to be conducted on foreign soil and, largely, by military means. The other four points that Bush brought up in his speech talk about forcibly making other country accept the American plans at the point of a gun and reiterate his point in the quote above. The President won't consider withdrawal or any kind of meaningful reduction of troops in Iraq because that would, in his view, as expressed above, undermine the entire effort.
Bush and the Republican Congress have not put any meaningful effort into really protecting America targets of potential terrorisms because they believe the fight is not really on American soil. Stephen Flynn, an expert on Global Terrorism and Prevention wrote this in 2003 and it is still largely true today:
... even though the most tempting targets for terrorists are those that can produce widespread economic and social disruption, the White House has declared that safeguarding the nation's critical infrastructure is not a federal responsibility. According to President Bush's 2002 National Homeland Security Strategy, "The government should only address those activities that the market does not adequately provide -- for example, national defense or border security. ... For other aspects of homeland security, sufficient incentives exist in the private market to supply protection." Unfortunately, this expression of faith has not been borne out. According to a survey commissioned by the Washington-based Council on Competitiveness just one year after September 11, 92 percent of executives did not believe that terrorists would target their companies, and only 53 percent of the respondents indicated that their companies had increased security spending between 2001 and 2002. With the passing of each week without a new attack, the reluctance of companies to invest in security has only grown.
Stephen Flynn, Foreign Affairs, Oct/Nov 2003
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/...
In addition to neglecting real protection for potential targets in America from acts of terrorism, the Bush Administration has used 9/11 and the Iraq War to demand new domestic spying and investigatory powers that supercede his authority under the US Constitution. The President puts a false choice before the American people stating, in effect, that you can either have safety or you can have privacy and civil rights, but you can't have both. Again, Stephen Flynn detailed the problem very well in an interview on the Council on Foreign Relations website:
What is your take on the president's admission that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Americans?
On domestic spying, this touches on one of the key concerns that have animated my work. I believe that when it comes to protecting and safeguarding the American people, we must not only focus on the dangers posed by terrorists and their weapons, but we must be mindful of the need to protect ourselves from ourselves. This is a big part of what a homeland security mandate should be--protecting not just physical and living things in America, but also America's way and quality of life. The do-whatever-it-takes mindset, whether it's torturing people in Guantanamo Bay or spying on your own citizens, is the kind of perverse argument made by those who argue that there's no way to adequately safeguard the country here at home because we just have too many soft targets which we can't possibly afford to adequately protect. This defeatist view about what can be done to make ourselves more resilient at home leads to the kind of advocacy we have been hearing in recent days from the President and Vice President for extreme measures to prevent acts of terror that we would never have considered before. There's no question, in my view, that dealing with al-Qaeda and the ongoing terrorist threat requires a different level of and different kinds of authority than existed before 9/11. But as a core principle, if you're going to raise the authority of the government to a new level, then you have to raise the bar on accountability. Unfortunately, what we seem to have today is a constant rising of government's level of authority with a diminishing level of accountability. The result of that, in the long run, will be a backlash by the public and a loss of support for important measures, particularly as the time between terrorist incidents expands.
Stephen Flynn, Dec 2005
http://www.cfr.org/...
Senator Kerry spoke out repeatedly during the '04 Presidential race about the failures of the Bush Administration to capture Osama bin Laden when they had a chance in late 2001 and has spoken out repeatedly in the 109th Congress about the many foreign policy failures of this Administration. Kerry was a very vocal critic of the Administration's inaction on Port Security issues and on this Administrations failure to act to shore up America's infrastructure and aid the First Responders in a time of crisis.
This non-action had fatal results last year when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coast. The same lack of resources, timely response, inability to communicate and so forth that plagued New Orleans during the aftermath of the storm would plague most major American cities in the case of a major terrorist attack. the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress that enables it have done nothing to really help prevent a major attack or to deal with the aftermath of a major attack here at home. They are so focused on the War in Iraq and so determined to spend American blood and treasury on that effort that they have neglected the very people who elected them to office on a promise of 'getting tough on terrorism' and on protection itself.
These are the issues that Senator Kerry will be talking about today in his speech. As a disclaimer, I am not associated with Sen Kerry or his office in any official way. I own the computer and aircard that I am using to live-blog this and the commentary is all my own.