With the horror of last week's disastrous terrorist attacks as a backdrop, debate over what to do fills the air in the US Policy-makers must also carefully consider what not to do.
What must be done is deceptively easy: dismantle the one or more international terrorist networks that planned the assault. Kill the terrorists, ruin their infrastructure, seize their resources and punish their supporters, especially governments.
Yet righteous anger should not lead to carelessness. It is important to kill the right people and destroy the right property.
There has been much loose talk about unleashing hell upon other nations, irrespective of the consequences, even upon civilians. But to slaughter the innocent is not just wrong, but foolish.
It is foolish because it creates more grievances and ultimately more terrorists; because it gives undeserved credibility to the terrorists' criticism of the US; and because it leaves the terrorists free to strike another day. The US cannot be paralyzed by fear of unintended consequences and not act. But it must have a reasonable belief that it is hitting the right people and doing so in a way calculated to hurt the least number of innocents.
Another objective is to make the US more secure, to forestall not only a similar assault, but any attack. That means more sucessful unearthing of terrorists and minimizing the harm from any plots that succeed.
But fundamental liberties should not be wantonly sacrificed, since they are what makes the US so unique and so great. Government needs power to fight the US' enemies, but that power must remain constrained, since it is easily abused by even the best intentioned.
In particular, Congress should wait for emotions to cool lest it needlessly sacrifice traditional legal safeguards. Lawmakers should address the serious threat of terrorism; most of the measures adopted in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing would do nothing to stop a repeat assault.
Standing up for the US also requires a willingness to tolerate the risks that inevitably face a free and open society. To close off the US from the world or abandon the liberties enjoyed by US citizens would result in an enormous victory for terrorists. An important symbol is Reagan National Airport; shuttering it would be an admission of surrender.
The US military must focus more on real threats to the US, which today emanate less from traditional ideologies and more from developing theologies like radical Islamism. That means more resources devoted to traditional defenses at home and unconventional capabilities abroad.
But such an effort does not require a massive military build-up. To the contrary, spending can shrink as resources are better deployed. For instance, fighters are not needed to guard Europe from the nonexistent "Red Air Force;" they are needed to police US airspace. Soldiers should not be patrolling Bosnia; they should be training to strike terrorist operations in isolated terrains.
The silliest proposal of all is to restart conscription. Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute worries that "there may be no other way out."
Over the last three decades the US faced the Soviets; won the Gulf War; blasted Serbia; invaded or deployed to a host of small states -- all with a volunteer
military.
And unless one plans on attacking -- and occupying, for years -- Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria simultaneously, today's force is far more than sufficient. Indeed, the volunteer military is better trained and motivated than any draft force, which is why the Pentagon has no interest in returning to the agonies of conscription. In any case, it would take months to turn raw draftees into soldiers. More important, focus groups suggest that many potential recruits want to protect the US, not engage in global social engineering. No longer defending prosperous and populous allies which face no serious security threats and policing civil wars which are irrelevant to US security would free up the forces necessary to protect the US and respond to terrorism.
Finally, it is important to forge cooperative international relationships to destroy small, shadowy terrorist networks that span the globe. And to deny terrorists sanctuary.
At the same time, the US must beware of becoming ensnared in the volatile political problems of other states. Washington has long seemed oblivious to how easy it is to make enemies and how able they are to cause grievous harm. It must not create new terrorists while attempting to eliminate old ones.
The world turned very ugly on Sept. 11. The US must learn the right lessons now lest it grow even uglier in the future.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
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