If we're going to win, we must confront terrorists
July 25, 2004
The dominant focus of the 9/11 commission's report concerns nuts and bolts: reorganizing and rethinking government so our intelligence capabilities and defense systems are maximized, plugging the dangerous gaps between the FBI, the CIA and other information-gathering agencies, ensuring their findings are readily available to our leaders so they can act upon them swiftly and decisively.
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But the commission also recognized that as crucial as the internal workings of national security are, they are no more important to our safety than our ability to defeat the threat of Islamic extremists on the enemy's home turf, wherever that happens to be.<font size=4> For the panel, that is a goal to be achieved less through military action than <font color=blue>"diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy and homeland defense."<font color=black> The United States must be seen as <font color=blue>"standing for a better future"<font color=black> for struggling Arabic nations -- quite a mountain to climb considering how prevalent intense anti-American hatred is in those countries.
There certainly is a need to upgrade our intelligence on foreign soil. A grave shortage of agents with sophisticated skills, including the ability to speak Arabic, now exists. There may also be a need for the United States to work harder to bolster our standing as a moral leader in the world, in light of blows to our image like the prison scandal in Iraq. But at this point in time, it's best to assume that winning hearts and minds in the notorious <font color=blue>"Arab street"<font color=black> is a lost cause.
While we should continue doing our utmost to hold out this country as a bastion of freedom and justice and opportunity and <font color=blue>"defend our ideals abroad vigorously,"<font color=black> American propaganda is unlikely to effect change. <font size=4>Not with Al-Jazeera TV feeding negative images of us with each passing hour in the guise of objective reporting and not with nations full of have-nots endorsing terrorism as a way to take out their bitterness and frustration on the Western haves.
As unidealistic or objectionable as it may be to some, the U.S. show of force in Afghanistan and Iraq has done more to advance our cause than any amount of diplomacy or propaganda could by demonstrating our commitment to dismantling oppressive regimes that support terrorism and helping install governments that are more responsive to the needs of their people. These are still unfinished projects, and the results still are incomplete and even flawed. But if the war is going to be won, America and its allies, within the Muslim world and without, must not back down from confronting terrorists wherever they rear their heads.
The Arab world understands power and strength. Had we followed that policy more vigorously before 9/11 (and, it can be argued, had we not been distracted from the Islamic nature of the primary terror threat by Oklahoma City), al-Qaida might not have gained the strength it has. How we look to the rest of the world comes in second to defending American lives.
Gates' giving sets new standard
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When you think about all the corporate greed that's been exposed, you have to give a hand to Bill Gates' philanthropy. This week Gates said he was handing over $3.3 billion of the one-time special dividend he will receive as chairman and chief shareholder of Microsoft Corp. The money will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Charitable Foundation. The family foundation has supported a wide number of causes: it aids public schools here in Chicago and other U.S. cities, it provides money to fight malaria in Africa, it funds public libraries and helps poor families in Washington state and Oregon.
Can one imagine a Martha Stewart or the executives at Enron or Adelphia donating their dividend profits to the needy? Their philosophy was more akin to "charity begins at home." The Gates family is following a lofty American tradition of benevolence: Recall Dale Carnegie setting up libraries in cities across the United States and Canada or Chicago's own Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Co., who gave money to set up dental clinics in public schools, to build YMCAs in African-American communities and to construct public schools for black southerners. If more executives of public companies behaved like Gates there would be more cause for optimism about our corporate leaders.
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