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[Editorial]

Regaining control

The Office of Homeland Security must be fully funded and authorized. Plus, a return to liberal internationalism.

To date, President Bush’s much-vaunted Office of Homeland Security remains a half-realized idea. In order for the new office and its director, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, to be effective, the agency must have funding and authority. It has neither. But surely the scattered response to anthrax exposures in Florida, Nevada, New York, and Washington, DC, tells us that we need a central authority to deal with the new realities of domestic terrorism.

As of this writing, thousands of people have been exposed to potent anthrax bacteria, though only a handful have become ill and just one man has died. In the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks and in the days before the first anthrax exposure was publicized, newspapers around the country reported on the likely US response to biological warfare. The message? We’re unprepared (see " You Read It Here First, " This Just In, News and Features, October 12). Still, it’s a shock to see just how unprepared we are. In New York, the FBI, looking into the possibility of anthrax contamination at the offices of NBC News, waited several days before notifying Mayor Rudy Giuliani or the New York health department of the potential threat. An NBC employee who is now being treated for cutaneous anthrax wasn’t diagnosed until a week and a half after she first visited a doctor. A police officer and two lab technicians investigating the NBC case of anthrax poisoning tested positive themselves for anthrax after improperly handling a contaminated letter. The Centers for Disease Control suffered a power outage that delayed testing of some of the New York cases.

Anthrax is not contagious. If caught early enough, the disease can be cured with antibiotics. But what if the terrorists spreading anthrax (and though no connection to the bin Laden terrorists has been made, whoever is doing this is, as Attorney General John Ashcroft has said, committing acts of terrorism) were spreading smallpox instead? (Yes, officials say there are only two samples of the virus left in the world, both under tight security. But why should we believe that?) Smallpox is not among the deadliest diseases, it’s true: only a third of unvaccinated victims die. But it is both contagious and untreatable. Instead of seeing a handful of people in offices testing positive for exposure — as in the cases of anthrax bioterrorism — we would see whole departments and their families come down with the disease.

As the New York Times reported Tuesday, health officials around the country are complaining about the lack of an organized, efficient, coordinated, and centralized response to anthrax terrorism. The Office of Homeland Security is intended to provide just such a response. We must give Ridge the authority and the money to get the job done.

It’s easier to focus on controlling damage on the home front when the international front is so murky, confusing, and dangerous. It is becoming more and more evident that almost nowhere in the world does anyone have the stomach for an escalation of military action. US air strikes targeting Afghanistan’s ruling " government, " the Taliban, have sparked riotous protests in Pakistan and Indonesia. Despite the apparently painstaking diplomacy that took place before the air strikes began, there is no coalition in place to prosecute the war.

Meanwhile, the United States has cozied up with " allies " like Saudi Arabia. Despite our defense of that country during the Persian Gulf War, Saudi Arabia’s ruling regime, the al-Saud family, will not let the US use its airfields for bombing strikes on Afghanistan. Nor will it seize the financial assets of terrorist organizations within the country. And no one from the ruling regime has publicly supported our actions in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal came to New York last week, wrote out a $10 million check for relief efforts, and declared that the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred because of US support for Israel. Mayor Giuliani rightly returned the donation. What kind of ally is this?

The only way out of this mess will be a return to the kind of liberal internationalist foreign policy that dominated this country’s agenda at the start of the Cold War (see " ‘Liberal’: No Longer a Dirty Word, " page 1). For much of the past 40 years, our foreign policy has been ruled by our own interests without much regard to liberal principles such as commitment to freedom abroad, civil liberties at home, and human rights everywhere. Which is how we’ve ended up with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan as our allies in the first place. In fact, our entire approach to the Middle East, with the honorable exception of our support for Israel — the region’s only democracy — has been ill-advised. Take, for instance, our relationship with Saudi Arabia. As Seymour Hersh’s brilliant dispatch in this week’s New Yorker shows, leaders in that country have financed terrorist activities — essentially paying " protection " money to bin Laden operatives to keep the regime alive. Since 1996, the US has had evidence of this corruption and has done nothing to stop it — or even protest it. Why? We need access to Saudi oil. In Egypt, another close " ally " (which gets nearly $2 billion a year from the US), human rights are brutally repressed. Take the recent example of 52 men recently thrown in jail on suspicions of homosexual activity. Why hasn’t our government sent the message that this is unacceptable? And both countries repress the rights of women. When the United States claims to be a beacon of liberty, as President Bush eloquently did during his address to Congress shortly after the attacks, it cannot turn the other way when countries it backs with financial and military support repress their own people. This sort of hypocrisy is why a generation of terrorists apparently conflates Arab self-determinism with anti-American sentiment.

We have every right to defend ourselves against the current threat — indeed, we are compelled to do so. As messy as this war is likely to get, we cannot back away. But infusing the battle with liberal principles such as a consistent approach to human rights isn’t just the best option — it’s our only option.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com

Issue Date: October 18 - 25, 2001





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