Bush and National Security

Below is Mitch Pearlstein's opening statement in a debate Tuesday night (9/23/03) on the question: "Be it resolved: The Bush administration is adequately addressing U.S. national and domestic security concerns in the wake of 9/11." He argued in the affirmative. Arguing in the negative was Phil Steger, executive director of Friends for a Non-Violent World. The debate was sponsored by the West Metro Neighbors for Peace and was held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka (in Wayzata).

Is the Bush administration adequately addressing U.S. national and domestic security concerns in the wake of 9/11?

I’m here to speak in the affirmative, and do so enthusiastically. But as we all know—more terribly after September 11, 2001 than the day before—the world is a terribly dangerous place. The membrane separating civilization from hell, as we learned once more, can be dangerously thin.

Regardless who the president might be right now, and regardless of what policies he or she might have sculpted over the last two years, there can be no guarantee that people out to destroy us—literally destroy the United States and kill millions by simple virtue of our citizenship and faith—might not attack again this very evening. Or they might hit tomorrow morning with the most hideous weapons. The very fact that we have not been slaughtered in our offices and homes in the 24 months since 9/11 suggests clearly to me that President Bush has been on the right track. Does it likewise suggest that this or any administration could ever protect us “adequately,” as the question before us tonight asks? The answer of course is no, because adequate in this instance implies much more sanity—and far less murderous hatred—than the world has to offer for the foreseeable future.

Beyond the fact that we have escaped a repeat of 9/11—a blessing many of us would have considered nearly miraculous two years ago—what other evidence is there that President Bush has been both strong and sage? My debt here is to columnist Charles Krauthammer, who recited this rundown in July. Consider, he said, what has happened in the Near East since more than 3,000 people died in New York, Pennyslvania, and Washington, DC.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been overthrown and a decent government installed.

In Iraq, the Saddam regime has been overthrown, the dynasty destroyed, and the possibility for a civilized form of governance exists for the first time in 30 years.

In Iran, with dictatorships toppled to the east (Afghanistan) and the west (Iraq), popular resistance to the dictatorship of the mullahs has intensified.

In Pakistan, once the sponsor and chief supporter of the Taliban, the government radically reversed course and became a leading American ally in the war on terror.

In Saudi Arabia, where the presence of U.S. troops near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina deeply inflamed relations with many Muslims, the American military is leaving—not in retreat or with apology, but because it is no longer needed to protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam.

Yemen, totally unhelpful to the United States after the attack on the USS Cole, has started cooperating in the war on terror.

In the small stable Gulf states, new alliances with the United States have been established.

Kuwait's future is secure, the threat from Saddam having been eliminated.

Jordan is secure, no longer having Iraq's tank armies and radical nationalist influence at its back.

Syria has gone quiet, closing terrorist offices in Damascus and downplaying its traditional anti-Americanism.

Lebanon's southern frontier is quiet for the first time in years, as Hezbollah, reading the new strategic situation, has stopped cross-border attacks into Israel.

And Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have been restarted, a truce declared, and a fledgling Palestinian leadership established that might actually be prepared to make a real peace with Israel. [Admittedly, conditions have changed here in the last two months.]

I would only add that notwithstanding almost daily guerrilla attacks in Iraq, the Middle East and other parts of the world have not exploded as many critics of Bush policy in Iraq predicted. The Arab “street” is not inflamed. Gas prices have not struck the stratosphere. What has happened instead—as messy, and nasty, and without guarantee as it all is—is that millions of Iraqis have been freed from their gulag and have a decent chance, thanks to the United States, for freedom itself.

Lest there be confusion about what the so-called “Bush Doctrine” actually is permit me to read two paragraphs. The second is from the “National Security Strategy of the United States,” issued by the Bush administration a year ago this month. The first paragraph is from the cover letter to that statement.

The gravest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates they are doing so with determination. The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed. We will build defenses against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery. We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain, and curtail our enemies' efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies' plans, using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.

This is also a time of opportunity for America. We will work to translate this moment of influence into decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty. The U.S. national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests. The aim of this strategy is to help make the world not just safer but better. Our goals on the path to progress are clear: political and economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity.

Three quick points to close:

One. One of my heroes is Jean Bethke Elstain, a political philosopher in the divinity school of the University of Chicago. To a series of questions that comes down to: “Will the Bush Doctrine make the United States and world safer from terror?,” she recently wrote this in American Experiment Quarterly:

Being the world’s superpower isn’t easy. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you fail to act, your are assailed for that failure. If you act, you are accused of imperialism. The Bush Doctrine understands this and sets the United States on the course of action. This does not mean hyperactive and frenetic intervention everywhere. It means assessing very carefully where the greatest violations are taking place and where precise use of force might have the most beneficial effect. The doctrine steers a middle way between a narrow realpolitik that severs ethical and diplomatic considerations and an unsatisfactory moralism that recoils at the use of American power. The former invites hard-headedness that slides into cynicism; the latter promotes soft-headedness that prides itself on moral purism even if the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Two. Another one of my heroes is journalist Heather Mac Donald, a brilliant and brave writer at the Manhattan Institute, a terrific think tank in New York. Heather, who is trained as a lawyer, is very much a conservative, and precisely because of that she was compelled to write, once again in AEQ:

In forging and acting upon the preemption doctrine, many conservatives have abandoned the great insight of conservative thought: the difficulty of engineering improvements in human society without producing unintended consequences. The unforeseen consequences of the Iraq invasion may haunt us for years.

Heather may, indeed be proven right. The two of us hope not, certainly, but history may be kinder to her caution than to George Bush’s high-stakes risk taking.

But at the end of the day, there’s point number three: In this very real and dangerous world for which there are no assurances, I cannot conceive of a sounder course than that pursued by President Bush.

I cannot because there isn’t the smallest doubt in my mind that it is not demonstrations of American strength that are most likely to invite terror, but rather, perceptions of American weakness. The types and varieties of weakness our enemies perceived, for example:

• After Iranian radicals took dozens of American hostages at the U.S. the embassy in Tehran in 1979.

• After a massive car bomb blew up the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1985, killing 63 people.

• After 241 Marines, in that same year, were murdered in their barracks in Lebanon—and we left town.

• After the World Trade Center in New York was bombed the first time in 1993.

• After two U.S. military compounds in Saudi Arabia were destroyed in 1996, leaving 26 dead and more than 500 wounded.

• After the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in 2000.

And on and on and on around the world . . . until September 11, 2001.

I owe this list, by the way, to Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe.

Obviously, the old ways of defending ourselves, our friends, and our interests did not work. I’ve been proud to support President Bush in our very real war against terror from the very moments the towers fell, the Pentagon split apart, and a Pennsylvania field was scorched, and I’m proud to endorse his policies this evening.

Thank you.

Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted.