To win the War on Terror we must recognize it for what it should be—a deadly serious fight to save American lives. When we treat it as a political exercise or a word-parsing game, we do so at our nation's peril. The fight against terrorists will proceed regardless of who is President or which party controls Congress. The outrageous beheadings of Americans Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson and South Korean hostage Kim Sun Il show that terrorists will be stopped only by their own demise. Either we wait for them to kill Americans in our homeland again, or we kill terrorists on their turf, before they get here. Waiting for another attack is not an option, and it's time political leaders and some press folks are less partisan and more plainspoken about this conflict.
Those who think terrorism will suddenly subside when we please France, get UN backing or change Presidents should know better. It's the same kind of failed logic they used against President Reagan in the early 1980s, just a few years before his strong policies helped defeat communism. Europe toyed with appeasement in the Cold War, as they disastrously did before World War II. Europeans called President Reagan a "cowboy," the same as they're calling President Bush. Liberals in the U.S. and in the world huffed at Reagan's daring to call communist dictatorships "evil," just as some do now when President Bush labels terrorists evil. Some here worried, as they do now, about our "image" in Europe and around the world. Well, I trust the American people's judgement.
America's people have a good track record of confronting evil, and we know it when we see it. Terrorism is surely evil, far more inherently evil than even communism. America's people knew strength was the best policy against dictators in the Cold War, and the only policy available in the Terror War. Those few obsessing over the Iraqi prison scandal, misquoting and politicizing the bipartisan 9/11 report by denying its well-documented relationship between Saddam and terrorists, including Bin Laden, are engaged in a thinly- veiled political campaign.
Recently a Mississippi columnist called the War on Terror, "nebulous"—a fancy word meaning "unclear." He believes that, unlike World War II, this conflict lacks moral clarity. Yet, to most Mississippians, and indeed most Americans, there's nothing unclear when terrorists target innocents, slam airplanes loaded with men, women and children into buildings or record graphic killings just for show. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I see the classified reports. I assure you, it's potent stuff. Yet, there's nothing classified or complex about the terrorists' goal. They want to use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons on our streets. There's nothing veiled about these terrible video tapes of innocents having their heads cut off for anybody to view. It's all too clear. By the way, I'll stand up for our men and women in uniform fighting the terrorist barbarians. They're just as able as any American generation. They are outstanding young people who volunteered for their duty, and they certainly don't need the help of any Senator or syndicated columnist to understand it.
Now, that's not to say we can't use some improvement in this struggle. The bipartisan 9/11 commission report showed the intelligence community failed repeatedly in both its intelligence gathering and analysis pertaining to both pre and post 9/11, and especially leading up to the Iraq War. Now, that didn't change the fact that Saddam had to be removed. But bad intelligence and analysis is something that must be improved to save American lives in the future, not to make political hay today. I'm advocating dramatic changes in our intelligence community, including establishing a cabinet-level office to which all our nation's intelligence agencies will be held accountable. I'm also pushing our intelligence agencies to get more human agents on the ground, and more trained linguists. A satellite in space can never replace a trained agent who knows the native language and his way around Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever the War on Terror leads.
Following an attack on our soil that killed 3,000 innocent people, President Bush and our men and women in uniform have faced down terror and had to write the manual for doing it. We've got to drop the partisanship surrounding this fight and remember we're all in a war, unlike any in history. And it will continue well past November's election. It's about saving innocent lives from murderers who've already killed scores of people. They'll use anything from knives to nuclear weapons to kill many more on our soil again, if we let them. No, there's really nothing nebulous about this - nothing at all. 6/23/04
Senator Lott welcomes any questions or comments about this column. Write to: U.S. Senator Trent Lott, 487 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 (Attn: Press Office)
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