Today's tragic report of deadly bomb blasts on London's transport network is
yet another clarion cry for America to lead a truly international campaign
against global terrorism. We owe this to ourselves and our progeny, to our
heritage and our nation, and to all of our friends around the world.
First, my deepest sympathies go out to London's innocent dead and wounded,
and to their families and national brothers and sisters. Like our common
forebears--victims of terrorism in the U.S. and every other region of the
world--we grieve over the senseless loss of life inflicted by zealous,
misguided, and armed predators. We Americans must recommit ourselves to a
leadership role that, as in our most valorous days, from the American
Revolution through the Cold War, we have inspired humanity forward.
First, my deepest sympathies go out to the London's innocent dead and
wounded, and to their families and fellow countrymen. Like their
forebears--victims of terrorism in the U.S. and every other region of the
world--we, as Americans, must recommit ourselves to a leadership role that
has inspired humanity from the American Revolution through the Cold War.
The 9/11/01 attacks on American soil provided the Bush Administration with a
truly historic opportunity to unite the civilized world in common purpose
against Afghanistan-based al Qaeda and its deadly offspring in 60 other
countries. The 3/11/04 Madrid train attacks opened another window for
national policy makers to advance a meaningful counterterrorism strategy.
Now, the 7/07/05 "London Calling"--coming as it does on the heels of
Britain's 2012 Olympic award and during the G-8 summit in nearby
Scotland--cries out for an urgent answer to international terrorism. The
United States has an awesome responsibility that we must now embrace.
After 9/11/01, instead of destroying al Qaeda's forward base in Afghanistan
and capturing Osama bin Ladin, strengthening America's homeland security,
supporting moderate leaders and pro-democracy elements in Islamic nations,
fostering international collaboration against Islamic radicalism, extending
and improving our intelligence-gathering capacity across the world, and
renewing our nation's credo that governments exists to protect individual
liberties, the Bush Administration and extremist leaders in Congress took
our nation in precisely the opposite direction.
Rather than a forward-looking counterterrorism strategy, here's what we got:
a slow and ineffectual military response in Afghanistan that allowed bin
Ladin and company to escape, a political and bureaucratic consolidation of
22 government agencies with no clear mission, dismissive and militarized
responses to key leaders' pleas for nation-building economic assistance, an
arrogant and misleading foreign policy (Bush) doctrine that openly
antagonizes our friends and Cold War allies, a largely unilateral war
against an Islamic, oil-producing, sovereign nation (Iraq) that posed no
threat whatsoever to the United States, and "Patriot Act" legislation that
assaults basic American liberties of privacy, due process of law, and
governmental checks and balances.
The Bush Administration's Iraq War claim that "we need to fight them over
there so we don't have to fight them over here" is completely discredited.
As Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief under Reagan, Bush 41,
Clinton, and Bush 43, said, "Invading Iraq after 9/11 is like invading
Mexico after Pearl Harbor." Even more to the point of this essay, the
"fight 'em there" mantra is a feel-good, ham-handed, talking point that
obscures the FACT that our great nation still does not have a
counterterrorism strategy.
George W. Bush's post-9/11 campaign to militarize select portions of the
globe is, in reality, a counterproductive series of tactical maneuvers that
undermines American security, in particular, and global security, in
general. Unthinking, misplaced, unilateral military responses are not the
way to win a world war, let alone a global war against an enemy that wants
to destroy the United States and all of western civilization.
America's war on Iraq continues to weaken the United States at home and
abroad, and strengthen al Qaeda in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa,the
Americas, and beyond. But these alarming trend lines can be reversed, and
must be reversed. Otherwise, we will continue to face the spiraling dangers
of a Taliban-like government in Pakistan armed with nuclear weapons, a
reborn Taliban satellite next door in Afghanistan that exports al Qaeda
ideology and terror, a nuclear-armed Iran with an openly radicalized
Hezbollah-style ideology, and a fragile Saudi Arabia that--after the
often-predicted fall of the House of Saud--could easily morph into an
anti-U.S. Islamic state.
Out of crisis comes opportunity. Like the 9/11 attacks on New York,
Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. that robbed more than 3,000 American
lives, and like the Madrid train attack of March 2004 that killed 191 and
injured more than 1500, this morning's terrorist attack news out of London
provides our national government with yet another crisis moment to transform
into opportunity--the opportunity to focus on and galvanize support around
an aggressive and effective counterterrorism strategy.
Who are we fighting in the war on terrorism? We're fighting Islamic
radicals and they are drawing people from the youth of the Islamic world
into hating us. What should be the building blocks of a counterterrorism
strategy? Instead of playing right into the hands of al-Qaeda our entire
government must reengage over the battle of ideas. We can best avoid the
public relations and human rights disasters of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
and the loss of 1700-plus sons and daughters and 100,000 more Iraqis by pulling
our troops out of harm's way in as rapid and orderly a manner as possible.
They can be replaced simultaneously with security forces from responsible
Islamic nations.
The time sensitive troop withdrawal will help address security problems here
by returning our national guard and military reserves to the home-protection
mission.
The government needs to clarify and streamline its data collection and
analysis functions. We must rebuild those military, economic, and
intelligence-gathering alliances and relationships that forged global
victories in 1918, 1945, and 1991.
We must wean ourselves from a fossil fuel diet that endangers our national
security, threatens our economic well-being, and undermines our capacity to
play an effective role in building a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution
to the most perplexing problem in the Middle East.
On the home front, the lessons of history are abundantly clear: liberty and
security are very difficult to balance. Yet the forfeiture of one almost
certainly guarantees the loss of the other. Liberty and security are
inextricably bound together. Freedom without order is chaos.
And order without freedom is authoritarianism. Let's make sure we get the balance correct in this year that congress reconsiders crucial sunset clauses due that can be renewed or allowed to expire.
Yours,
Chuck Pennacchio
Charles Pennacchio, Ph.D.
History and Poli. Sci. Assoc. Prof.
University of the Arts
and
2006 U.S. Senate candidate, Pennsylvania