Tag Archives: Congress

Where’s the Outrage?’ Tenet’s Man Can’t Conduct an Independent Intelligence Inquiry

February 18, 2002Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Can House and Senate Intelligence Committees?

(Washington, D.C.): There is one word for those who thought the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were going to conduct a thorough, no-holds-barred investigation of problems within the U.S. intelligence community that may have contributed to its failure to warn of, and prevent, September 11: Fuggedaboutit.

To be sure, there will be a formal inquiry, featuring some number of open hearings, plus probably large quantities of testimony taken in secret session. The Senate committee’s chairman — Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida — declared at a Capitol Hill press conference last Thursday: “We owe [it] to the 3,000 who died, their families and the rest of America…to ascertain why the intelligence community did not learn of the Sept. 11 attack in advance and identify what, if anything, might be done to better position the community to warn and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States.”

You would never know from this forthright pronouncement that Sen. Graham had steadfastly resisted conducting such an investigation. The truth of the matter is, however, that both he and his House counterpart — Rep. Porter Goss, Republican of Florida and a former secret agent — were as reluctant as CIA Director George Tenet, and the Bush Administration writ large, to see the intelligence community subjected to close scrutiny.

Until Thursday, the argument was that an investigation at this time would distract the Agency’s personnel from the war on terrorism. Then suddenly, on Valentine’s Day, everything changed. The Committee chairmen expressed their commitment to — in Sen. Graham’s words, “Let the chips fall where they may, whether it’s individuals, institutions or processes.” For his part, Director Tenet announced that he welcomed the inquiry, saying “It’s important we have a record. It is a record of discipline, strategy, focus and action.”

Why the Turnabout?

What, it might reasonably be asked, prompted such an apparently complete reversal since it seems the demands on the U.S. intelligence community to ferret out and defeat terrorists are as great as ever? There appears to be only one explanation: The fix is in.

On Thursday, Sen. Graham and Rep. Goss disclosed that they had hired one L. Britt Snider to run their $2.6 million investigation. They lauded Mr. Snider’s extensive experience on Capitol Hill and in the CIA and spoke with confidence about his ability to conduct a “thorough” and “independent” inquiry. Given the actual nature of his associations in Congress and at the Agency, however, it is no more reasonable to expect Britt Snider to be thorough, let alone truly independent, than it would be if Enron’s general counsel had been tapped to run hearings into his company’s melt-down.

After all, Mr. Snider is George Tenet’s guy. When Tenet was staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee in the late 1980s — during which period he forged close personal and professional ties with many of the legislators now charged with overseeing his conduct — the future CIA Director made Snider the panel’s general counsel. Later, when Tenet was appointed the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), he asked Snider to be his “special advisor,” in which capacity the latter served for two years. Then, in 1999, Director Tenet persuaded President Clinton to give this hand- picked and reliable subordinate the role of in-house watchdog, the CIA’s Inspector General.

Failure, What Failure?

Now, it would be one thing if George Tenet had said from the get-go after September 11th that there were serious problems in the way his agency, and the Intelligence Community more broadly, had been doing business. If, for example, he had acknowledged that over the past decade such problems — including an insistence on the political correctness of U.S. intelligence products, the diminished priority accorded to human intelligence and serious restraints on domestic surveillance of potentially subversive elements — had contributed to the Nation’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and pledged his full cooperation to document, address and correct those problems, perhaps having the DCI’s proxy run a congressional investigation into these matters might have made sense. Perhaps.

One could at least argue that such a sweetheart arrangement would facilitate the promised cooperation between the Agency and the investigators. But under the actual circumstances — where, incredibly, DCI Tenet denies that there was any failure — can someone closely tied to the Director, someone who shares some measure of responsibility with him for whatever went wrong, possibly be the best choice to lead this important inquiry? If, as the Republican Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, put it “We should leave no stone unturned; we’ve got to turn them all up,” that job should not be entrusted to someone who was supposed to have done it long before now.

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, this is not simply a question of a bad choice for a key staff position. Rather, it calls into question whether the Senate and House select committees on intelligence can conduct a truly thorough and independent investigation. In calling for a Warren Commission-style board to conduct this inquiry, Sen. Robert Torricelli correctly observed in Sunday’s Washington Post that: “Those committees have had continuing oversight responsibilities for the very intelligence agencies they would be investigating” and “would not provide the full and impartial investigation needed.”

The Nation desperately needs to learn — and to apply urgently — the lessons of September 11th. In the midst of President Clinton’s myriad scandals, William Bennett once famously asked, “Where’s the outrage?” Regrettably, the outrageousness, and the potential costs, of failing to get to the bottom of the 9/11 intelligence failures demand an even greater outcry now.

Cover Up: The Senate-House Investigation into Intelligence Failures to Be Run by George Tenet’s Long-time Subordinate

February 13, 2002Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): So much for a rigorous review of the policy and other failures that contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s inability to detect and prevent the deadly attacks of September 11th. No sooner had members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee’s decided that these problems required a comprehensive review — a review that would almost certainly implicate CIA Director George Tenet for his role in implementing defective policies, if not in every case initiating them — than they turned over its conduct to one of Mr. Tenet’s most trusted subordinates: L. Britt Snider.

This personnel decision sets the stage for a whitewash of epic proportions — as if Sen. Sam Ervin had hired John Erlichman to run the Watergate investigation or Ken Lay’s general counsel were tapped to run all the congressional investigations into the Enron debacle.

These invidious comparisons are hardly exaggerations. Britt Snider was, until last year, the Inspector General of the Tenet CIA. From 1997-98 he served as Special Counsel and advisor to Mr. Tenet. From 1989 to 1992, he was general counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Mr. Tenet was its Staff Director. It is hard to imagine how such an individual could bring the sort of independence and dispassionate objectivity to the task that the Committee so clearly requires — especially with respect to one of the Clinton and serving CIA Director, whose activities and judgment most demands the Congress’ consideration.

It is, moreover, unclear at this writing whether Mr. Snider will be allowed to hire the rest of the staff charged with conducting this investigation. If so, it is entirely possible that none of those retained for that purpose will be able or willing to find fault with the intelligence community’s past direction, priorities or conduct — let alone that of the elected and appointed officials whose political and policy proclivities appear to have contributed to the 9/11 failure.

The Bottom Line

If the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are determined to give a complete pass to George Tenet and the direction he gave the community over the past five years, they might as well spare the taxpayer the expense of going through the motions of an investigation. If, on the other hand, they really do want to learn and apply the lessons of September 11th, they would be well advised to secure the services of those who have at least as much expertise in the field of intelligence as Mr. Snider, but not his disabling baggage of past institutional and personal loyalties.

Worried About Civilian Casualties in the War on Terror? Don’t Allow Terrorists to Masquerade as Non-Combattants

February 13, 2002Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The Bush Administration has been roundly assailed at home and abroad over its decision to treat individuals captured in Afghanistan as unlawful combattants rather than prisoners of war (POW). While one would never know it listening to the complaints from allied government spokesmen and human rights activists, what is at issue is not the humane treatment of these detainees. They are all being treated well, considering they have to be confined — better than they were in Afghanistan, better than they would be in their own countries and certainly far better than they would have treated any bonafide American POW who fell into their hands.

What is, instead, at issue, are the implications of according such detainees the status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. It is particularly important to understand these implications for the civilian populations at risk in the war on terrorism — especially at a time when media and policy elites are beginning to “hyperventilate” over reports of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan resulting in unintended and regrettable “collateral damage.”

Fortunately, in recent days, two published items have helpfully clarified the compelling reasons for the U.S. government to continue rejecting appeals to call the detainees POWs. The first is an excellent White Paper by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies co-authored by Andrew Apostolou, an historian at Oxford University, and Fredric Smoler, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. The second appeared as an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on 11 February. Both should be required reading for everyone participating in the debate over those incarcerated at Gitmo.

Excerpts from
The Geneva Convention Is Not a Suicide Pact

by Andrew Apostolou and Fredric Smoler, Foundation for the Defense of Democracy

Maintaining a strict distinction between lawful combatants (conscripts, professionals, militiamen and resistance fighters) and unlawful combatants (such as bandits and terrorists) not only protects the dignity of real soldiers, it safeguards civilians. By defining who can be subject to violence and capture, the horror of war is, hopefully, focused away from civilians and limited to those willing put themselves in the line of fire, and seek no cover other than that acquired by military skill.

If we want soldiers to respect the lives of civilians and POWs, soldiers must be confident that civilians and prisoners will not attempt to kill them. Civilians who abuse their non-combatant status are a threat not only to soldiers who abide by the rules, they endanger innocents everywhere by drastically eroding the legal and customary restraints on killing civilians. Restricting the use of arms to lawful combatants has been a way of limiting war’s savagery since at least the Middle Ages.

In addition to the legal and military practicalities, there is an obvious moral danger in setting the precedent that captured terrorists are soldiers. Not only does that elevate Mohammad Atta from a calculating murderer into a combatant, it puts the IRA, ETA and the Red Brigades on a par with the Marine Corps and the French Resistance.

The U.S. is trying hard to find the most humane way to wage, and win, this war. There is no precedent for this challenge and no perfect legal model that can be taken off the shelf. Yet it is precisely because the U.S. takes the Geneva Convention seriously, with both its protections for combatants and the line it draws between combatants and civilians, that the U.S. is being so careful in the use of the POW label. Some of the detainees may yet be termed POWs, but restricting the Geneva Convention’s protections to those who obey its rules is the only mechanism that can make the Geneva Convention enforceable.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said that the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. Neither is the Geneva Convention. If well-meaning but misguided human rights activists turn the Geneva Convention into a terrorist’s charter and a civilian’s death warrant, the result will be that it will be universally ignored, with all that implies for the future of the international rule of law.

Geneva Conviction
Review & Outlook
The Wall Street Journal, 11 February 2002

If international human rights groups had the courage of their convictions, they’d applaud President Bush’s decision last week that the Geneva Convention applies to Taliban, but not al Qaeda, fighters captured by the U.S. In doing so, he is showing more respect for the Convention than his critics.

The core purpose of the Geneva Convention is to encourage the conduct of war in a way that minimizes violence to civilians. Another aim is to encourage respect for basic human dignities — toward civilians, combatants and captives. Yet another goal is to encourage warring powers to set up chains of command to ensure that combatants are held responsible for their actions.

One of the most important ways the Convention accomplishes these goals is to require that warring parties make a distinction between combatants and
civilians. Soldiers are supposed to be subject to a chain of command, wear insignia and carry their arms openly; they are required to abide by the laws of war, which forbid attacks on civilians. If they don’t, then they’re not soldiers; they are illegal combatants, not entitled to the protections of the Convention. Breaking down this distinction — as the human rights groups wish to do — would have the effect of legitimatizing terrorists and giving them more incentives to hide among civilians and go after civilian targets.

It doesn’t take a degree in international law to figure out that men who fly civilian airplanes into office towers aren’t legal combatants. Article 4 of the Geneva Convention specifies the conditions under which combatants who aren’t members of the armed forces may be deemed POWs. (See nearby box.) Those clamoring for a tribunal to decide the status of the al Qaeda detainees ought also to read Article 5, which says a tribunal is necessary only “should any doubt arise.” Where’s the doubt here?

Mr. Bush’s decision on the Taliban detainees was more difficult, and advisers made good cases both ways. In the end, he did what Presidents are supposed to do: decide. He ruled that Taliban detainees, as the fighting force of Afghanistan, are covered by the Convention but that they had forfeited the right to POW status since they had broken the laws of war as outlined under the Convention’s own provisions.

Mr. Bush’s decision may well save American lives. Most crucial, it allows the U.S. to interrogate the detainees, who may have information about other attacks. POWs are required to give only their name, rank and serial number and must be repatriated after hostilities end. It would be an act of national suicide to put these men back in circulation when their declared objective is to kill more Americans.

Ultimately, the U.S. will have to decide what to do with the detainees. That might mean trying them by military commission or in civilian court. The detainees come from 28 countries, and another option is to send some home for trial. Afghanistan said over the weekend that it plans to put the Taliban foreign minister on trial.

In the meantime, the international human rights groups continue their assault on America. Having damaged their credibility by raising false alarms about detainees in Guantanamo, they are now descending on Afghanistan, in search of evidence against the U.S. there. Human Rights Watch says it’s sending in a team to evaluate the extent of civilian casualties from the American bombing. It doesn’t seem to matter that never before in history has a warring power tried so hard to avoid killing civilians.

The 1950 Geneva Convention never envisioned the kind of war we’re now in. Yet by both its conduct of the war and its treatment of the Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, the U.S. has shown its respect for the Convention and the principles for which it stands.

Key Legislators Urge Bush Team to Help Liberate Iraq

December 7, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): A letter to President Bush from leading figures in the House and Senate signals important bipartisan congressional support for impending action aimed at taking the war on terrorism to Saddam Hussein. This correspondence not only underscores the necessity for doing so; it urges that the President enable such an effort to succeed by allowing the Iraqi National Congress (INC) — which is correctly described by the signatories as “the only umbrella organization comprising all elements of the Iraqi opposition…no one group is excluded, no one group is favored — to operate inside Iraq.

As the signers, led by former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman and Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, note:

If we have learned one thing from the ongoing battle in Afghanistan, it is that working effectively in coordination with locals on the ground can significantly leverage our own use of military force….Without allies on the ground inside Iraq, we will be handicapping our own efforts. Each day that passes costs us an opportunity to unite and professionalize the Iraqi opposition, thus ensuring it will be less capable when the conflict begins.

As the moment when the unfinished business of Operation Desert Storm — the removal from power of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Iraq — nears, it behooves the Bush Administration to lay the groundwork for the early achievement of those goals by unleashing the Iraqi National Congress. Toward that end, it must immediately abandon the policy of denying the INC the use of funds for operations in Iraq previously authorized and appropriated for that purpose.

Congress of the United States
Washington, D.C. 20515

December 5, 2001

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The events of September 11 have highlighted the vulnerability of the United States to determined terrorists. As we work to clean up Afghanistan and destroy al Qaeda, it is imperative that we plan to eliminate the threat from Iraq.

This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

For much of the last year, the Administration has struggled to plug loopholes in the international sanctions against Iraq. Unfortunately, efforts to coopt Saddam’s illegal trading partners — particularly Syria — have failed. In the meantime, the illegal oil trade from Iraq has flourished, and Saddam now earns an estimated $2 billion annually, much of which he has devoted to his military and his illegal weapons programs.

If we have learned one thing from the ongoing battle in Afghanistan, it is that working effectively in coordination with locals on the ground can significantly leverage our own use of military force. While we have no doubt that in the long run, the United States will always prevail in battle with the likes of the Taliban (not to speak of Saddam Hussein), we also know that we can minimize casualties and shorten conflict by cooperating with opposition forces. That has been a key element of US strategy for several decades.

Since the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act three years ago, we have fought to provide support for Iraqis inside Iraq. The Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella group of all the significant anti-Saddam forces inside Iraq, has consistently requested Administration assistance for operations on the ground in Iraq ranging from the delivery of humanitarian assistance and information-gathering to military and technical training and lethal military drawdown.

Despite the express wishes of the Congress, the INC has been denied U.S. assistance for any operations inside any part of Iraq, including liberated Kurdish areas. Instead, successive Administrations have funded conferences, offices and other intellectual exercises that have done little more than expose the INC to accusations of being “limousine insurgents” and “armchair guerillas.” We note the troubling similarity of these accusation to charges made against the Afghan guerillas now helping us win the war against the Taliban.

The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained. For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later. Without allies on the ground inside Iraq, we will be handicapping our own efforts. Each day that passes costs us an opportunity to unite and professionalize the Iraqi opposition, thus ensuring it will be less capable when the conflict begins.

Again, we can learn from our experience in Afghanistan. We cannot be drawn into the ethnic politics of any particular nation, but should find a way to work with all the opposition in a unified framework. The Iraqi National Congress is the only umbrella organization comprising all elements of the Iraqi opposition. No one group is excluded, no one group is favored.

Mr. President, all indications are that in the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power. Let us maximize the likelihood of a rapid victory by beginning immediately to assist the Iraqi opposition on the ground inside Iraq by providing them money and assistance already authorized and appropriated.

We look forward to working with you on this most important matter.

Sincerely,

Sen. Trent Lott

Sen. Joseph Lieberman

den. John McCain

Sen. Jesse Helms

Sen. Richard Shelby

Sen. Sam Brownback

Rep. Henry Hyde

Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.

Rep. Benjamin Gilman

Don’t Legitimate Terrorist Regimes in the Name of Fighting the War on Terrorism

September 19, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): President Bush is being encouraged by his State Department and some allies to make an extraordinary mistake: In the interest of creating the impression of world-wide solidarity in the war against international terrorists and their sponsors, they want the U.S. to enlist — incredible as it may seem — international terrorists and their sponsors in the cause.

The latter include nations with long histories of giving terrorist organizations material and financial support, safe havens, training and logistic and intelligence assistance. Among the most egregious of such states now reportedly being consulted, if not courted, by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his minions are: Syria, Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Pakistan and Yasser Arafat’s proto-state, the Palestinian Authority.

The United States is also exploring the willingness of others with long ties to terrorism, like Russia and China, to make common cause. Moscow and Beijing apparently are saying they are willing to be on our side, but only conditionally so. For example, the PRC is making absurd demands, including that it wants proof that any U.S.-led military action is warranted, consistent with international law (as defined by their UN Security Council veto), will not incur the loss of innocent civilians’ lives and — worst of all — will be accompanied by American support for China’s efforts to suppress its own “terrorists” and “separatists,” (read, Taiwan and Tibet).

At the very best, these initiatives will utterly compromise the nature of the war Mr. Bush has correctly said we must now wage. It is simply impossible, not to say incoherent, to pretend such “allies” can possibly be part of the solution when they are so manifestly part of the problem. Legitimating odious, terrorist-embracing regimes like Iran’s and Syria’s as members in good standing of the civilized world would be strategically disastrous and morally abhorrent — a point made lucidly by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle in today’s Daily Telegraph.

At worst, fair-weather friendships with such states will come at an unacceptably high price: They may catastrophically compromise counter-terrorist military and intelligence operations, or simply impede such operations sufficiently as to preclude them from being successful.

Even if we could reliably manage the risks of such ties to our servicemen and women and intelligence operatives — and to the accomplishment of the dangerous missions immediately at hand in Afghanistan and elsewhere, we will have done relatively little to diminish international terrorism if, in the end, most of its sponsors remain unscathed, to say nothing of their being politically and morally rehabilitated by the United States.

An infinitely better, and far more realistic, approach would be to make up the anti- terrorist coalition of fellow democracies who share our commitment to freedom. In particular, it should rest on those nations who have also been the victims of terrorism at the hands of Islamic supremacists. Tunku Varadarajan argues persuasively in today’s Wall Street Journal for relying in particular on Turkey, India and Israel to get the job done. Such nations have few illusions about the nature of the war violently thrust upon us last week and are likely still to be there when the going gets tough.

At the end of the day, the Bush Administration’s integrity — as well as its stewardship of an enormously complex, difficult and costly war — requires that the President resist the temptation to forge a coalition whose ranks may give the appearance of being formidable, but whose effectiveness and cohesiveness will be fatally undermined by the inclusion of those who are every bit as much this nation’s enemies as those we must now fight.

State sponsors of terrorism should be wiped out, too

By Richard Perle

The Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2001

THERE is an air of Vichyite defeatism about some of the commentary in Britain on the current war on terrorism.

We constantly hear the reiteration of such themes as “We don’t know who the enemy is”, “We don’t know where to strike them”, “Even if we could find them, it would simply create more martyrs” and that “The Wretched of the Earth” (to use the title of Franz Fanon’s famous anti-colonial tract) are so desperate that they would not fear honourable death at the hands of what they see as the “Great Satan”.

The US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other senior Administration officials are quite right to say that it is a totally new kind of war which the Free World now faces. But even though it is new, the Vichyite contingent would be quite wrong to extrapolate from that that the US and its allies are impotent.

Even if we don’t yet know the whole story about last week’s atrocities, we know enough to act, and to act decisively. The truth is that the international community has not created a new world order in which sponsorship of terrorism by states is beyond the pale. Without the things that only states can provide – sanctuary, intelligence, logistics, training, communications, money – even the bin Laden network and others like it could manage only the occasional car bomb. Deprive the terrorists of the offices from which they now work, remove the vast infrastructure now supporting them and force them to sleep in a different place every night because they are hunted – and the scope of their activity will be sharply reduced.

Regimes supporting terrorism have many different motives. Some, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, do so because they agree with the fanatical outlook of their proteges. Saddam Hussein, crazed by a desire for vengeance, pays the families of suicide bombers. The Saudis tolerate terrorism out of fear and weakness, hoping thereby to deflect them on to other potential victims.

We can, we must get governments out of the terrorism business. We do enjoy economic, political and military leverage over sovereign states, whose leaders do not crave martyrdom. There are, of course, precedents for such action. The Syrians permitted Armenian terrorists to operate freely from territory they control – until intolerable pressure from the Turkish government forced the Ba’athist regime to expel their “guests”. This resulted in a precipitate drop in terrorist attacks.

In recent years, there has been no penalty for tolerating or even abetting terrorism. After the bombing of the United States al-Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the local authorities feared the consequences of further aggravating the perpetrators more than they feared American displeasure, and the investigation went nowhere.

As the US builds a coalition to combat terrorism, it must remember that including states that are themselves sponsors of terrorism, or ready to tolerate it, carries a heavy price. The last time around, in building the coalition to liberate Kuwait in 1990-91, we paid a cost which we should never again bear.

For example, Syria was invited to join the Gulf war coalition. Its military contribution to the campaign was minimal, yet in exchange for getting inside the western tent it obtained the latitude to continue the use of and the sponsorship of terrorism – especially in Lebanon. It has continued to destabilise the region. There are those who argue that even Yasser Arafat, a terrorist himself, who has recruited suicide bombers, commemorated their murderous acts, and ordered the assassination of American diplomats, should join the campaign to combat terrorism.

Today, there is even talk about bringing Syria, Iran and Libya into a new anti-terrorism front. But if these regimes want to get into the creditors’ club, as it were, then they must cease to be debtors. That means renouncing terrorism in word and apprehending terrorists in deed, now.

Depth of genuine commitment to the anti-terrorist cause must not be sacrificed for the sake of breadth. In other words, breadth and “inclusivity” must not become ends in themselves, especially if they compromise the moral basis of avenging the slaughter of innocents.

For example, Iran has its own reasons for supporting military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. But no one should confuse Iranian support for such action with an Iranian commitment to oppose terrorism. It is unthinkable that we could admit them into the coalition. An anti-terrorist coalition that has any reasonable prospect of success will be made up of countries that value democratic institutions, individual liberty and the sanctity of life.

It cannot include countries who repress their own people, violate fundamental human rights and scorn the fundamental values of western civilisation. Momentary, fleeting collaboration for immediate tactical advantage may make sense, as Churchill understood in joining with the Soviet Union to defeat Nazism. No coalition to defeat terrorism can include countries that countenance campaigns of hate and vilification. Countries that tolerate the incitement to kill civilians – Americans, Britons, Israelis and others – have no legitimate role in the war against terrorism.

Some countries may be unwilling or unable to participate in a coalition that demands a respect for the values and norms of western civilisation. The nature of their hold on power may be inconsistent with genuine opposition to terrorism. Such countries are part of the problem, not the solution, and we neither need their help nor would benefit from their professions of support.

Those countries that harbour terrorists – that provide the means with which they would destroy innocent civilians – must themselves be destroyed. The war against terrorism is about the war against those regimes. We will not win the war against terror by chasing individual terrorists, any more than we will win the war against drugs by arresting the “mules” who pass through Heathrow. It is the networks that send young men on suicide missions and their sponsors that must be destroyed.

America’s Allies for the Long Haul

By Tunku Varadarajan

The Wall Street Journal, 19 September 2001

In the war against Islamic terrorism — and not merely in the impending strikes against its practitioners in Afghanistan — the U.S. should be aware that there are two classes of ally among the many states to which it will turn for cooperation.

The first is the kind whose common cause will emerge, ad hoc, with each battle, and whose enthusiasm for an anti-terrorist crusade will depend on the regional or strategic contours of each engagement. This kind of ally might accurately be described as opportunistic, or mercurial, and an example would be Pakistan, whose military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, has formally — albeit through gritted teeth — offered logistical support to U.S. ground and air forces.

The second, truer kind of ally is the one whose support for any war on Islamic terror is not opportunistic, but instinctive and philosophical. Its fight against this terror is driven by the deepest conviction; indeed, its fight is driven also by dire need, for not to fight would spell doom for its society, and for its civilization.

A perfect example of this kind of state, and ally, would be Israel, whose very existence depends, daily, on combating and overcoming terror. Another example is India, which grapples with organized Islamic terrorism — both state-sponsored and freelance — on a scale that no country, bar Israel, can match. A third example is Turkey, which, while a state of Muslims, is not a Muslim state.

Outside the Western world, as geographically defined, these three states are perhaps the only ones on which the U.S. can count, virtually unconditionally, to show an immutable opposition to Islamic terrorism. Crucially, they are all situated at terrorist nodes, in a vast, seething region in which Islamic states are heavily preponderant.

Israel is surrounded by hostile forces that seek its extirpation from this earth; Turkey borders Iran and Iraq, but its aversion to militant Islam stems as much from cartographical misfortune as from its own Ataturkist history. India shares a border with Pakistan, whose Interservices Intelligence not only helped establish the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but also hosts about a dozen major terrorist training camps on Pakistani soil.

These camps are now temporarily closed for business, and for the first time in over a year, Indian troops have recorded no border incursions by terrorist infiltrators. Gen. Musharraf, left with no choice but to accede to Washington’s demands, has scrambled to ensure that America’s laser gaze is not fixed also on the groups that enjoy Pakistani sponsorship. These include names which are as yet unfamiliar in the West, but which are, in India, as much the stuff of dread as Hamas is in Israel, or the Hizbollah. They are the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami, the Tehreek-e-Jehadi-Islami, the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, whose Afghan and Pakistani cadres wage holy war on Indian soil.

The U.S. would do well to encourage the formation of an anti-terror alliance between India, Israel and Turkey. In the long-term war against Islamic terrorism, these are the states in the region with a visceral need to vanquish Islamic fundamentalism, as well as the military capability to fight it. Importantly, they can be relied on to keep their resolve, for they will not be fighting as proxy combatants. Their separate wars against the expansionist forces of militant Islam predate that of the U.S.

Besides, India is in a position to take on a major role as a leader of a global anti-terrorism alliance, unencumbered, as it is, by Israel’s diplomatic disadvantages. It is inconceivable, for example, that Muslim Arab states would object to the participation of Indian troops in an anti-terrorist enforcement action. An Israeli presence, on the other hand, would have the effect of fracturing any broader coalition.

Turkey, for its part, would be an almost indispensable member of this alliance. Indeed, if the military and strategic assault on Islamic terrorists is to be accompanied by an intellectual and cultural offensive, what better example than Turkey’s to demonstrate that a distinction can be made between an Islam that is secular and one that is intolerant, aggressive and terroristic. The threat of the spread of such militant Islam into Central Asia can be checked by an India-Turkey alliance, and with the secular “Turkification” of the old Silk Road countries.

In the war against Islamic terrorism, the U.S. needs allies who are in it for the long haul, not ones who pick and choose their battles, laying conditions that vary from time to time. India, Israel and Turkey — collectively and, where necessary, discretely — can give Washington the sort of stable, unwavering comradeship in arms and ideas that President Bush (and, let’s face it, his successors) will need, at least for another generation.

This is not going to be a brief war, nor will there be a swift, decisive victory. The U.S. must choose its allies well, and give them the assurance, too, of unflinching support and friendship. Only then will Islamic terror, currently so grotesque and violent, be snuffed out.

Why Do Sens. Dodd and Kerry Want to Deny Otto Reich a Hearing? To Obscure The Extremism’ of Their Own Views

September 7, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that Senate Democrats are determined to block the confirmation of President Bush’s nominees to several senior posts. That’s not news. What was astounding, however, is that in at least one case — that of Ambassador Otto Reich to become the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere — Senators Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and John Kerry of Massachusetts are unwilling even to permit the President’s choice to have a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Read Dodd’s Lips

This stance is especially puzzling insofar as Sen. Dodd declared after his party regained the majority earlier this year:

We’re going to move as quickly as we can. I think that every administration deserves to have its people in place. And if there are problems from time to time, we need to resolve those, because we want to get as many people out as quickly as we can so that we don’t have a long lag time in allowing our country to be well represented….

If ever there were a time when the United States needs to be “well represented” in this hemisphere it has to be at a moment like the present. After all, American interests are at issue all across Latin America: Venezuela — the largest foreign supplier of oil to this country — is in the hands of an increasingly autocratic and anti-American leader; Colombia is in the process of a political meltdown fomented by its narco-terrorists; strategic Panama is awash with drug money, gun-running, alien-smuggling and Chinese operatives; Argentina is in economic free-fall; major bilateral issues are in play with Mexico; Fidel Castro’s misrule in Cuba may finally be coming to an end, with huge uncertainties about what comes next; desperate agricultural and meteorological conditions are afflicting much of Central America; and, of particular relevance, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega may be about to stage an ominous political comeback in Nicaragua.

In fact, such times were made for a man of Otto Reich’s background, expertise and skills. As a former senior official in the Reagan Administration’s Latin American policy apparatus; as a U.S. Ambassador formerly posted to Venezuela; as an Hispanic American who fled the Communist take-over of Cuba and has been intimately involved with Cuban issues ever since; and as a businessman with ties and contacts throughout the hemisphere, Amb. Reich is a man in whom President Bush has rightly reposed his confidence. Throughout his career, Mr. Reich has worked to defend his adoptive country’s interests and secure the blessings of liberty for those who live south of our border.

How could it be, then, that such a man may not even be afforded an opportunity to present his qualifications and defend his record before the Foreign Relations Committee? It appears that the Committee’s chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, has embraced a grossly distorted portrait of Mr. Reich circulated by a handful of died-in-the-wool, left-wing non-governmental organizations and legitimated by Messrs. Dodd and Kerry. An aide to Sen. Biden, presumably reflecting his boss’ views, is quoted in yesterday’s [Washington Post] as saying the nominee “is viewed as something of an extremist. That’s not the kind of person we need in a post like this.”

Who’s the Extremist’?

The real reason why Messrs. Kerry and Dodd are fighting so hard to prevent Otto Reich from getting his day in court is that a full hearing on his nomination would likely demonstrate that there are extremists in the room, alright, but that Mr. Reich is not one of them. If anybody fits that harsh billing it would actually be Senators Kerry and Dodd.

Let’s recall, Messrs. Dodd and Kerry were leaders of congressional efforts on behalf of the Sandinista cause. They assiduously sought to undermine and thwart the Contras’ ultimately successful efforts to liberate Nicaragua from the corrupt Marxist misrule of Daniel Ortega. The basis for this effort stems from Sen. Dodd’s deeply held belief that“we shouldn’t [assume] that [if] someone happens to be a Marxist, that immediately they’re going to be antagonistic to our interests or going to threaten our security.” Furthermore, his response to the idea that the Sandinista’s were “promoting revolution without frontiers” underlies his mis-characterization and subsequent criticism of Mr. Reich, when he stated that “[he doesn’t] necessarily believe that because they use that kind of rhetoric that they’re determined to overthrow every neighboring government in the Central American region.” They may, understandably, be reluctant to admit that fellow travelers like them were on the wrong side in that defining moment during the 1980s, when Latin America’s future hung in the balance — and when Ronald Reagan and outstanding subordinates, like Otto Reich, helped ensure that the region (apart from Castro’s Cuba) secured the opportunity for democratic self-governance and economic growth.

What is more, it is the likes of Senators Dodd and Kerry who are now trying to provide life- support for the one regime in the region that has successfully denied its people’s that opportunity: Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba. They seek to end the U.S. embargo — or at least to gut it by easing restrictions on American travel, agricultural sales, shipments of medicine, etc. They consider Mr. Reich as an “extremist” for having long and correctly argued a different approach: “In our relationship with Cuba we should remember how the Soviet Union was defeated [i.e. through economic warfare]a pro-active policy toward Cuba, similar in scope, can likewise succeed in bringing about peaceful and rapid end to Communism in Cuba. But it will require imagination and resources.”

The Bottom Line

If Senators Christopher Dodd and John Kerry, and their chairman, Joseph Biden, persist in denying Otto Reich a hearing, they will be not be demonstrating that he is unfit for the post which President Bush wants to entrust to him. Far from it. Instead, they will be calling into question their own fitness to sit in judgment of Mr. Reich’s nomination and, for that matter, to play a prominent role in the formulation and articulation of American foreign policy.

The Debacle in Durban: U.S. Was Right to Leave, But Really Shouldn’t Have Gone in the First Place

September 6, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): As the latest, appalling exercise in mob rule that passes for UN- sponsored multinational deliberations grinds towards its scheduled end-point in Durban, South Africa, it is well to reflect on where this meeting on racism (and other grievances) went wrong. Happily, two recent analyses — the first an editorial that appeared last week in the current New Republic, the second a column by Michael Kelly that appeared in Tuesday’s Washington Post — do much to help understand the serious flaws that all-but-guaranteed that no good would come of this meeting.

The first of these essays offers with respect to this conference a welcome and fully justified — if rather rare — endorsement of President Bush’s “unilateralism.” by a publication like the New Republic with left-of-center leanings on domestic policy. Its essence is summed up in the following passage:

Durban reminds us that the “international community” liberals love so much still amounts to little more than the sum of its parts, many of them brutal regimes that rule without the consent of those they govern. When it furthers the cause of peace, freedom, or justice, the United States has an obligation to stand with the international community. But standing apart from that community when its conclaves pollute public discourse–as the conference in South Africa is doing this week–should not be cause for self-flagellation. It should be a point of pride.

Mr. Kelly goes so far as to predict that the President’s unilateral action with respect the Durban goat-rope will prove to have sustained beneficial repercussions:

In the long term, walking out is likewise to the good. It is not healthy for the forces of anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism to be allowed to persist in the idea that it is their proper role to whack the West, and that the West’s proper role is to sit there and take the whacking. It is healthy for the United States, as the leader of the West, to occasionally remind everyone that taking a hike is an option too. An occasional reminder of reality helps against the delusions of power that cause most wars. As George Bush might put it, guns don’t kill people, delusions do.

It is to be earnestly hoped that the Durban debacle will end whatever lingering “delusions” the American people may yet have harbored that their interests and equities can be safely entrusted to the hostile and sovereignty-sapping mercies of the mob that controls the UN.

Show of Farce

The New Republic, 10 September 2001

The U.N. World Conference Against Racism, being held this week in Durban, South Africa, is an illuminating spectacle. Not for what it will accomplish–which is absolutely nothing–but for what it has already clarified, both at home and abroad. A few years ago, optimists thought the United Nations, and the gaggle of nongovernmental organizations that cluster around it, was finally realizing that democracy in Israel did not constitute a threat to human dignity and that rampant dictatorship in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East did.

The optimists were wrong; the United Nations and its acolytes are as morally obtuse today as they were the day the Berlin Wall fell. And in their denunciations of the Bush administration’s admirable decision not to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to this charade, more than a few American liberals have shown that they, too, remain frozen in amber.

Truth be told, the world does not need an anti-racism conference. Aids, corruption, debt, and illiteracy all constitute greater burdens on the world’s poor. But if anti-racism is to have any value at all, it must at least be viewed as a subset of the larger issue of human rights. In Durban, however, anti-racism is actually a bludgeon against human rights. At a planning session in Geneva last month, representatives from the non- governmental organizations attending the conference approved a declaration resolving that Israel–the only country in the Middle East where citizens freely choose their leaders–is “an apartheid, racist, and fascist state.” And–despite the presence in Durban of such freedom-loving countries as Sudan, Iran, China, and Zimbabwe–Israel is the only one singled out for abuse by the conference’s organizers. Not only will the human rights records of these execrable regimes be exempt from examination; many of them intend to use the conference to claim “reparations” from the United States. Third World dictatorships have long used America’s real and imagined deeds as an excuse to lock up, loot, and even murder their citizens. Now they’re using them as an excuse to shake down the United States. No one who knows anything about Africa’s postcolonial history can imagine that sending guilt checks to its thuggish and corrupt regimes will help the continent’s suffering masses one bit.

In fact, the agenda of the Durban conference is barely distinguishable from that of the first heady Third World rally, the 1955 Bandung Conference. All the recent talk about a “New Middle East” and an “African renaissance”–about the new post-cold-war respect for democracy and human rights–turns out to be just that: talk. Left to their own devices, the despotisms that litter Asia, Africa, and the Middle East quickly revert to the old pathologies, blaming others for predicaments of their own devising. Tellingly, the exceptions to this pattern–the regimes that offer their people more than just historical resentment–are also the ones that want little to do with the forthcoming show of farce in Durban. The president of democratic Senegal, for instance, calls reparations “absurd” and “insulting,” while democratic India has opposed the resolution castigating the Jewish state.

Alas, many liberals seem to think that the United States must attend international conferences as a matter of principle–no matter what principles those conferences actually propound. Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia speculates that the Bush administration is snubbing the conference because the White House is “just full of latent racists.” Jesse Jackson complains that Powell’s decision not to attend represents “a huge step backward toward isolationism.” Michael McClintock of Human Rights Watch gleans in the abstention evidence of “a larger trend toward unilateralism and not being bound by international fora and treaties.”
But there are greater sins than unilateralism, and cooperating with other nations in the name of hatred happens to be one of them–a point strangely lost on much of the American human rights industry. If anything, Durban reminds us that the “international community” liberals love so much still amounts to little more than the sum of its parts, many of them brutal regimes that rule without the consent of those they govern. When it furthers the cause of peace, freedom, or justice, the United States has an obligation to stand with the international community. But standing apart from that community when its conclaves pollute public discourse–as the conference in South Africa is doing this week–should not be cause for self-flagellation. It should be a point of pride.

Good Time to Take a Hike

by Michael Kelly

The Washington Times, 4 September 2001

Delegations from around the world have been meeting in Durban, South Africa, under the auspices of the United Nations for something called the World Conference Against Racism. From such a grand title, one might expect the conference to address all racism in all nations. One might think this, that is, if one was ignorant of the track record of these U.N. conferences, which have a long new-left history of serving as forums for the ritual whacking of the United States and its allies — above all for whacking one ally in particular: Israel.

Going into this year’s conference it was clear that Israel once again would enjoy most favored nation whacking status. President Bush warned against this, and his administration underscored this warning by declining to send Secretary of State Colin Powell, opting instead for a delegation of second-tier diplomats. The conference lived down to expectations, producing a draft resolution filled with what Powell properly called “hateful language” that singled out “only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse.” Specifically, the resolution expressed the conference’s “deep concern” over the “racist practices of Zionism . . . as well as the emergence of racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority.”

So Israel walked out, and so did the United States. And then, of course, came the usual chorus of carping, tut-tutting and deep regretting. Pakistan’s foreign minister said he was disappointed in the U.S. action. Sweden’s deputy industry minister said the United States “left the conference far too early, before the negotiations were concluded.” Italy’s La Stampa newspaper warned that the U.S. walkout “marks the beginning of a new Cold War.” A spokesman for the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party called the Bush decision “a gross mistake.” Canada’s chief delegate said the pullout “undoubtedly makes the work being undertaken in Durban that much more difficult.” U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the U.S. decision was “unfortunate.” Jesse Jackson, the chief delegate of the delegation from Jesse Jackson, said that the United States “should negotiate a change, not withdraw and run.”

This could go on forever. Actually, it has gone on forever, and it will go on forever. Which is precisely why walking out was such a good and necessary idea. This may sound like mere jingoism — if Jesse Jackson and the Canadians disapprove, it’s the right thing to do. But the case for walking is actually one on the merits. It works.

It works, first of all, in the short term. In Durban, all efforts by the polite European friends of Yasser Arafat failed dismally. Arafat himself delivered a speech — after Jackson had boasted of his influence in moderating Arafat’s views — accusing Israel of “a supremacist mentality.” The draft resolution that prompted the American and Israeli walkout represented a complete rejection of all efforts to persuade the Israel-haters to tone down the rhetoric.

Then George Bush, the impolite president (you know, my dear, he is a unilateralist) yanked the U.S. delegation home. What has been the result? For starters, the European Union nations, seeing a splendid opportunity to score off Bush and the United States, have led a drive to “salvage” the conference by forcing a return to the negotiating table and a rewriting of the resolution. If this succeeds, the Europeans will get the satisfaction of reprising the Kyoto morality play (“Noble Europeans Rescue Grateful World from Mud- Stupid U.S. President”) and the conference will pass a resolution that is acceptable in basic terms of fairness and honesty.

That’s an okay outcome. If the new effort fails, the conference will fall apart, the Europeans will get the satisfaction of once more denouncing the mud-stupidity of Bush, and no resolution will be passed. That’s an okay outcome too.

Either way, thanks to Bush’s rude resolve, the immensely counterproductive resolution that had been on the table will have been killed and its supporters will have suffered a major poke in the eye.

In the long term, walking out is likewise to the good. It is not healthy for the forces of anti- Westernism and anti-Americanism to be allowed to persist in the idea that it is their proper role to whack the West, and that the West’s proper role is to sit there and take the whacking. It is healthy for the United States, as the leader of the West, to occasionally remind everyone that taking a hike is an option too. An occasional reminder of reality helps against the delusions of power that cause most wars. As George Bush might put it, guns don’t kill people, delusions do.

One particularly dangerous delusion held by a surprising number of people in the Middle East is that Israel will one day be forced to its knees — and that America will let that happen. This week, in Durban, that delusion confronted reality.

U.S. Sovereignty, Not Isolationism, is What Guides Bush Rejections of Defective Treaties

July 26, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The common if rather sophomoric response to President Bush’s recent decisions to disassociate the United States from five defective bilateral and multilateral agreements is to denounce him as an “isolationist.” The following essay by Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. published in today’s National Review Online, makes clear, however, that — far from being impelled by isolationist impulses — Mr. Bush is acting to assure that this nation remains an engaged and effective actor in international security and global affairs.

President Bush appreciates that that goal is far more likely to be advanced if the United States retains the formidable military strength and economic power that flows from its civil society rooted in the American Constitution than by its participation in any number of international accords. This is all the more true to the extent that, notwithstanding the large numbers of other nations that have agreed to sign the agreements in question, at least some will actually fail to honor their obligations.

Mr. Bush is to be commended, not criticized, for recognizing the threat to American sovereignty, interests and even its security posed by agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court treaty, the original Small Arms Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol. Had the President yielded to the immense pressure to do otherwise, he might temporarily have gotten better press and a fleeting respite from the criticism of foreign capitals and domestic opponents. Ironically, though, history would likely judge him harshly had he endorsed accords that had the unintended — but unavoidable — effect of weakening the United States and its people’s support for American engagement, thereby undermining the international environment that makes it possible for freedom-loving nations to operate in prosperity and security.

The Isolationist President? It’s U.S. Sovereignty, Stupid

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

National Review Online, 26 July 2001

In recent weeks, the drumbeat of criticism of Bush administration foreign policies has sharpened considerably. TV pundits, editorial cartoonists, journalists, allied governments, and prominent Democrats, including notably Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, have been denouncing the president for acting “unilaterally.” They fret that he is putting the United States squarely at odds with the will of the “international community.” His is an “isolationist” approach, they say, one that threatens to alienate our friends and undermine our interests around the world.

There is no disputing the fact that Mr. Bush has adopted policies at odds with what passes for an international consensus on a number of topical issues. He has, in particular:

Rejected as unworkable and unacceptably costly the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions that are said to contribute to global warming.
Declared his intention to “move beyond” the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with or without Russian assent in order to develop and deploy effective missile defenses prohibited by that accord.
Refused to pursue ratification of the Treaty of Rome which establishes an International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that such a mechanism is likely to become politicized and may be abused to prosecute American leaders, military personnel, and other U.S. citizens without regard for their constitutional rights.
Opposed efforts to impose via an international treaty controls on Americans’ right to bear arms that were deemed unconstitutional. And,
Most recently, decided not to agree to a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). After exhaustive study, the Bush administration concluded that, while the BWC annex is intended to make that treaty prohibiting the production, possession, and use of biological and toxin weapons more verifiable and enforceable, it won’t do either. Yet, it would have other, real, and very undesirable costs.

What these examples illustrate is not that President Bush is willfully and recklessly disregarding America’s responsibility to be a world leader and exemplar to others. Rather, he is assuring that the nation retains the military power, economic strength, institutions of free and representative governance, and constitutional liberties that enable this country to play such a role.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s mantra from the 1992 campaign, “It’s U.S. sovereignty, stupid.”

The immutable fact is that each of the agreements to which President Bush has objected infringe unacceptably on American rights, prerogatives, and/or responsibilities:

U.S. accession to Kyoto would compel the federal government, American businesses and individual citizens to make significant changes in their day-to-day activities, changes that would impinge upon the productivity, welfare and possibly even the security of this nation. Mr. Bush appreciated, moreover, that these burdens would not be equally shared by other leading developed nations (Britain and Germany being spared significant economic dislocation thanks to their previous closure of obsolete greenhouse gas-emitting steel plants) or by large developing nations like China and India. Worse yet, the Kyoto Protocol like virtually every other multilateral accord would cede U.S. sovereignty to a supranational institution. In this case, the “international community” would assert oversight authority concerning American CO2 emissions and, at least indirectly, the energy use largely responsible for producing them.

Mr. Bush has similarly refused to allow anybody else to determine whether and how the United States will be defended against ballistic-missile blackmail or attack. To be sure, one of his predecessors nearly 30 years ago and under altogether different strategic circumstances decided to give the Soviet Union a veto over American missile defenses in the form of the ABM Treaty. Fortunately for all Americans, this president understands that, in the wake of the demise of the USSR and the emergence of missile threats from a number of other quarters, it is not only imprudent to leave the Nation unprotected; it is contrary to the federal government’s sovereign responsibility under our Constitution to provide for the “common defense.”

Speaking of the Constitution, President Bush appreciates that its protections and rights would not be guaranteed to Americans prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. After all, the court is to adopt, and its activities are to be governed by, a hodgepodge of legal codes and practices. These will not, however, include such pillars of U.S. criminal jurisprudence as a trial by a jury of the defendant’s peers or the right to confront his or her accusers. The president cannot in good conscience agree to surrender cardinal principles of our Constitution to unaccountable international prosecutors, judges, and institutions.

Foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations have made no secret of their desire to use the Convention on Small Arms as a means of overriding Americans’ deeply cherished, if hotly contested, right to own and bear arms. While President Bush did go along with a new international agreement meant to make it more difficult to engage in illegal international trafficking in light weapons, he properly refused to subordinate domestic ownership of such weapons to supranational purview and dictates.

The Biological Weapons Convention would afford foreign intelligence services and business competitors access to many of the United States’s most sensitive proprietary processes and data in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering all without contributing appreciably to the deterrence or detection of covert and illegal BW activities.

The United States already made this mistake once, in connection with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Thanks to that treaty, countries like Iran that are known to have ongoing covert chemical-weapons programs are being given a wholly unwarranted clean bill of health. Meanwhile, U.S. government facilities and private companies are being subjected to disruptive, potentially damaging, and certainly costly on-site inspections by an international inspectorate. America simply cannot afford to extend and compound the CWC’s damage to its cutting-edge industries in the highly competitive biotech and genetic-engineering fields.

It is regrettable that President Bush has been put in the position where he has to stand up again and again for American sovereignty which is now being threatened by so many ill-advised agreements. Had his immediate predecessor been more protective of our institutions, rights and equities, he would have refused to allow these accords to metastasize as they have. Interestingly, even Bill Clinton felt compelled to act in what would now be called a “unilateral” fashion by refusing to sign onto a fatally flawed ban on anti-personnel landmines. He also declined to recommend to the Senate ratification of the ICC Treaty in its present form which he described as “deeply flawed,” even though at the last moment he buckled into pressure to sign it.

Clearly, it would be far easier for Mr. Bush to go with the flow, earning the kudos of the chattering classes at home and abroad by allowing agreements reflecting the lowest common denominator of scores of nations to become part of the growing body of supranational institutions and legal structures. It is to the president’s great credit that he has not done so, given the high costs associated with such a course of action.

When all is said and done, though, not only will the United States be better off as a nation if George W. Bush succeeds in enhancing American sovereignty than if he embraces treaties that erode it. With its economic and military strength and constitutional arrangements secure, America will also be a more effective and engaged world power. That will benefit every law-abiding member of the “international community” far more so than they would from any number of agreements with those who do not respect the rule of law or intend to honor their treaty commitments pursuant to it.

Don’t Politicize Military Matters

June 18, 2001Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of two recent, controversial Bush Administration decisions with far-reaching national security implications, Democratic legislators have called for congressional hearings. Unfortunately, the focus of these initiatives could become an attack on the integrity and ethical conduct of the President’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove. This would appear to be a mistake for two reasons. First, Mr. Rove appears to be an honorable man and a dedicated public servant.

Second, there is a real problem with both the Administration’s recent approval of the sale of the Silicon Valley Group (SVG) to a foreign buyer and its announcement that the Navy would not be permitted to use Vieques Island for critical combined arms training after 2003. But that problem is the evident subordination of national security interests to political considerations, not unethical behavior. If the latter is what partisan congressional investigators choose to pursue, they may miss altogether what should trouble all of us — and fail to take whatever corrective actions might yet be possible.

Selling Our Seedcorn

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California and ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, has asked that panel’s chairman, Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, to launch an inquiry into Mr. Rove in connection with the SVG sale. Congressman Waxman did so in response to published reports that Mr. Rove may have had a conflict of interest since he was lobbied a few months back by Intel Corporation representatives anxious to have an interagency group known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approve SVG’s purchase by a Dutch competitor called ASML. At the time, the President’s advisor held at least $100,000 worth of Intel shares.

My sense is that, to the extent Karl Rove played a role in the Administration’s ultimate approval of the SVG decision over objections from the Pentagon, it was not because he was swayed by personal pecuniary considerations. Rather, many senior members of the Bush team — and, for that matter, Members of Congress — are anxious to do what Intel wants simply because they recognize that this huge company and its friends in Silicon Valley have become one of the most important new sources of campaign contributions and political influence.

The trouble lies with what Intel wanted. Intel is a principal consumer of electronic chip-manufacturing machines utilizing a technology known as lithography. Thanks to many millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer investments in the Silicon Valley Group, its lithography machinery was among the best in the world. Moreover, it had pioneered breakthroughs in the field that promised to allow SVG to dominate the industry in the years ahead. Importantly, SVG was also the last manufacturer of lithography machines in the United States.

SVG’s European rival, ASML, saw an opportunity to take out its competitor and proposed to purchase it and a subsidiary called Tinsley Laboratories that manufactures precision optics used in spy satellites and for other defense-related purposes. Although the Defense Department belatedly recognized that it would be contrary to U.S. national security interests to have no American supplier of such equipment, Intel — which views itself as a multi-national, not a U.S., company — pushed very hard, and ultimately successfully, to have the Pentagon’s recommendations disregarded by the White House.

Dispensing With Realistic Training

A similar political override took place last week with respect to Vieques. Both Republicans and Democrats alike have appreciated that Hispanic Americans represent an increasingly influential and potentially decisive electoral group. (Surprisingly, even savvy Anglo politicians frequently fail to appreciate, however, that this community is far from monolithic in their views. For example, Cuban- and Mexican- Americans and others from Latin America share a common language but frequently have little else in common with Puerto Ricans.) Hence, Bill Clinton pardoned convicted Puerto Rican terrorists and pandered to the opponents of Navy and Marine training on Vieques.

Faced with the Clinton legacy on Vieques — specifically, the prospect of a possible repudiation in a referendum of the island’s residents to be held in November — and anxious to curry favor with Hispanics, the Bush team decided that the Navy would have to find someplace else to exercise by 2003. There is, however, no reason to believe that the military will in fact get two years to find someplace else. Neither is there anyplace else in prospect that will enable the sort of realistic training done at Vieques over the past sixty years, without which American personnel sent into harm’s way may suffer needless casualties and/or fail to accomplish their missions. The new Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, has announced his intention to hold hearings on this decision and will presumably zero in on its political aspects.

What Congress Should Do

Just as Congress could usefully examine the folly of allowing industries vital to U.S. security to be sold off to entities that may prove to be unreliable suppliers — and/or willing providers of such technology to potential adversaries — so it could helpfully conduct a rigorous evaluation of the assumptions underpinning the Vieques decision. In particular, legislators ought to assess whether Navy Secretary Gordon England’s claim that his service will find an “acceptable alternative” (as opposed to a place, or places, capable of providing the same training benefits as Vieques) is supportable and, if so, whether such lesser training is adequate.

In addition, Capitol Hill should address whether the precedent being set by the transparently politicized decision to get out of Vieques will have a highly detrimental ripple effect around the world and perhaps even in the United States itself. After all, what is to stop others seeking an end to military exercises in their backyards from demanding equal treatment with the Puerto Ricans?

The Bottom Line

In short, Congress could do a valuable service to the national interest and security if it helps the Bush Administration to keep politics out of military-related public policy decisions. The way to do this is not to pursue witchhunts against the likes of Karl Rove, but to establish unmistakably that such decisions should not be made in his office but in the Defense Department in consultation with the President’s National Security Advisor.

Bush and the Democrats on Security Policy: Potential Peril — and Opportunity

June 6, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Sunday’s New York Times featured an article that should serve as a wake-up call to the Bush Administration’s national security team and Republican political operatives. Under the headline “Differences over Vieques Bitterly Divide Democrats,” the Times described a rift in Democratic ranks over defense matters that arguably has not been seen since Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson fought with the “Blame- America-First” types in his party over Vietnam, U.S.-Soviet arms control and other defining Cold War issues in the 1970s and ’80s.

It turns out that not all Democratic politicians agree with liberals like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and DNC Chairman Terry McAulliffe who have associated themselves with radical Puerto Rican demands that the United States immediately halt vital military training on Vieques Island near Puerto Rico. Others, like moderate-to- conservative House Armed Services Committee members Reps. Solomon Ortiz and Gene Taylor have strongly disassociated themselves from what Mr. Solomon described as “anti- military” attitudes and Mr. Taylor called “pandering of the worst sort” to Hispanic voters.

Even the Democratic chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Silvestre Reyes — while sympathetic to the people of Vieques and critical of the Navy’s handling of the islanders’ concerns — has warned, “We can’t afford to send our [service]men and women into harm’s way without the proper training.”

This development presents George W. Bush with a potential problem. It also has the makings of a terrific opportunity.

A Choice for Security Policy

The problem is that his policies on Vieques (which President Bush has decided to stop using in 2003, irrespective of whether another facility for properly training our men and women in uniform can be found), on the overall budget for defense and on ending the crimes against humanity being wrought by the odious government of Sudan invite his Democratic opponents to “run to his right” on many security policy matters.

On the other hand, by adopting a more robust position on these issues, Mr. Bush can both avoid a political liability effectively exploited against his father by Bill Clinton in 1992 (when Clinton cynically adopted for the purpose of the campaign harder-line stances than Bush-the- Elder had on Russia, Iraq, China and Milosevic) and build strongly bipartisan support for his defense and foreign policy positions.

For example, Mr. Bush should join sensible Democrats in insisting that the armed forces cannot stop training in Vieques unless and until there is someplace else for them to garner equally realistic preparation for combat. He should welcome bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill to provide something approaching what the military needs in the way of funding for modernization, maintenance and world-wide operations — an amount considerably in excess to the $18 billion plus-up the Bush Administration has requested.

President Bush should also shift course on Sudan by embracing an approach to stopping the Khartoum regime’s genocide, slave-trading, proliferation and support for international terrorism that enjoys wide and growing support, not only among conservative-to-moderate Democrats but across the political spectrum. This approach calls for blocking access to the U.S. capital markets for foreign oil companies whose exploitation of Sudanese energy reserves is providing revenue streams used by Khartoum to underwrite its predations.

The use of such limited capital market sanctions — approved by the House of Representatives last month by a vote of 422-2 but strenuously opposed by the Bush team — makes all the more sense since James Buckee, the president of one of the most egregious offenders, Talisman Energy Inc., recently made it clear that his company would sooner pull up stakes from Sudan than risk losing access to the American investors’ money: “I don’t think anybody could afford not to have access to the U.S. capital markets. No asset is worth that.”

Happily, President Bush has as well an opportunity to pick up critical Democratic support for his top national security priority: quickly protecting this country, its forces overseas and allies against ballistic missile attack. According to today’s New York Times, “a Democratic union representing defense industry workers has…begun urging its 750,000 active and retired members to push for missile defense. To my Democratic friends on Capitol Hill, I would urge them to forgo the short- term, tactical, partisan advantage,’ R. Thomas Buffenbarger, the president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said recently. Can our party really afford to be seen as weak on the defense of America’s cities? I think not.'” Would-be presidential candidate and Senator Joe Lieberman is one of a number of Democrats who agree.

The Bottom Line

While Mr. Bush is vacationing this month, he would be well advised to do a little summer reading that could pay off, as Dick Cheney says, “big time” this fall when critical congressional votes take place on missile defense, Pentagon budgets, Vieques and Sudan. Last year, Dr. Robert Kaufman published a superb biography entitled Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (University of Washington Press). It describes the myriad, extraordinary contributions Scoop Jackson made to this Nation’s security, environment quality and social well-being.

More to the point, the Kaufman book offers a salutary reminder of what can happen to a Republican President when national security-minded Democrats get to his right on defense and foreign policy (as Scoop and his colleagues did to Gerald Ford, with devastating effect on the Ford-Kissinger detente agenda). It also describes the enormous contributions sensible and public- spirited Democrats can, alternatively, make when they have a robust President and sound GOP security policies to support (as Jackson did for Ronald Reagan, until the former’s untimely death in 1983).