by Bobby Jindal
I don’t see any reason to continue giving Miranda rights to foreign terrorists, as we did to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of Flight 253. As Senators Collins and Lieberman wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal “almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks.”4 This is just common sense; intelligence is our first line of defense in war. That’s why I voted in Congress to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) so the president and the attorney general could authorize electronic surveillance of foreign agents without a court order. Extending full legal protections to foreign terrorists will simply mean more dead Americans.
Our national security strategy should aim to achieve one thing: defeating our enemies. Some say this is an unrealistic goal, and that we can only hope to manage, not eliminate, problems like terrorism and rogue states. I think this attitude short-changes America’s abilities. Winning World War II was so difficult that at the time many pessimists believed it would take us decades to win, if we ever could. And during the Cold War, most scholars and Washington experts assumed the Soviet bloc was a permanent fixture in global affairs. The simple fact is that history is moved and shaped by the actions of leaders and by the courage of nations. As Reagan said, “Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.”
Adopting a defensive strategy toward terrorism simply won’t work. Think about it: the terrorists are not going away. They are not going to abandon the fight because we try to reason with them or indulge their grievances. If we don’t hunt them down, destroy their networks, and kill their leaders, we will cede the field of battle to them. They will get to pick when and where to attack us. Sitting back passively and waiting for an attack is not a strategy. And relying on civilian passengers to restrain a terrorist on a plane, or alert passers-by to notice a car bomb in Times Square, is not a strategy. Eventually our luck will run out.
Instead of staying on the defensive, we need to put the terrorists on the defensive. We should relentlessly hunt them and kill them so they have to spend all their time just trying to stay alive. That strategy requires us to give our armed forces the leadership and financial and material resources they need to win. I’m not interested in parity; I want to guarantee U.S. military superiority. As the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson put it, “International peace and security depend not on a parity of power but on a preponderance of power in the peacekeepers over the peace-upsetters.”5
Above all else, our national security policy should aim to protect America. But that mission is clouded when President Obama and others blur the lines between the United States and the rest of the world. They emphasize the need for “consensus” among the “international community.” Apparently finding his U.S. citizenship too limiting, then-Senator Obama in 2008 proclaimed in Berlin that he was “a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” Along the same lines, when asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama replied that he believed in it “just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”6 Our president seems to think it would be intolerant to believe that America is more exceptional than any other country.
Consistent with its internationalist approach, the Obama administration puts far too much faith in the United Nations to solve problems and guarantee world security. The UN is simply a collection of governments—many of them tyrannical—that all pursue their own interests. So it made little sense, in the name of furthering international cooperation, for the Obama administration to join the discredited UN Human Rights Council, where paragons of civil rights such as Cuba and China deflect scrutiny of their own miserable human rights records by indulging in the Islamic world’s favorite pastime: denouncing Israel. In May 2010, a majority of UN members elected Libya—a country run by an oppressive, mentally unstable dictator whose government was implicated in the horrific Lockerbie plane bombing and other bloody terrorist activities—to the Human Rights Council. That vote came shortly after the misogynist, theocratic government of Iran was elected to the leading UN women’s rights agency, the Commission on the Status of Women.
Because UN membership is open to any two-bit despot, the organization has become corrupt and dysfunctional. So it’s quite disturbing to see the Obama administration rely on the UN to take a leading role in tackling some of the major national security challenges of our time, such as keeping the Iranian mullahs from developing nuclear weapons. While I was in Congress I voted for the U.S.—which pays more of the UN budget than any other country—to withhold funding for the UN in order to encourage transparency, anti-corruption measures, and other reforms. But I’m not sure if any reforms could fix the UN’s dysfunctions.
We would do much better to put our faith in our allies rather than in some nebulous body filled with autocrats. Senator John McCain has proposed creating a League of Democracies. Comprising only democracies, it would better reflect our values and better protect U.S. security. Although such a league would present a valuable way to coordinate our actions with our allies, we also have to be prepared to go it alone. No one—no person, country, or international organization—should have veto power over American security. Ever.
History teaches that democracies are more peaceful than tyrannies and are extremely unlikely to wage war against other democracies. So, for our own benefit and for the international good, we should work to spread democracy. But we cannot be naïve about this undertaking. For democracy to flourish you need more than elections and the basic infrastructure of representative government. You need cultural values that reinforce democratic instincts. One thing we’ve learned in Iraq is that it takes a lot of effort to spread notions of individual rights and democratic norms in cultures that are less individualistic.
But I do know our ideals inspire people everywhere in the world. Perhaps some people want to live in oppressive societies—especially the people who are doing the oppressing—but the vast majority of people everywhere would live in freedom if given the opportunity. And it is our duty to provide the world’s best example of a free society. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “[The authors of the Declaration of Independence] set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all peoples of all colors everywhere.”7
In light of the difficult battles we’ve faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new kind of isolationism has gained adherents in both parties. The thinking is that if America would stop standing up for dissidents, speaking out for human rights, and trying to spread freedom, we would become safer by making ourselves inconspicuous. This, of course, is a revival of the kind of thinking that became popular in America after World War I. But what we learned with the outbreak of World War II was that world events affect us and draw us in, whether we like it or not. This is especially true today in light of globalization and the spread of nuclear technology—any country capable of manufacturing or obtaining a nuclear device could directly threaten the United States. This suggests two possible approaches: we could “be nice” to regimes like the Iranian Ayatollahs and hope they’ll be nice back to us once they get nukes; or we could use all available means to keep them from getting nukes in the first place. I would opt for the second course—it’s never a good idea to leave your fate in the hands of your enemies.
Moreover, isolationism contradicts America’s national character. We have traditionally responded to threats by taking the offensive, by confronting and defeating our enemies head on. This tradition runs deep in our history. President Thomas Jefferson dispatched Americans to North Africa more than 200 years ago to deal with Barbary pirates. As Yale hist
orian John Lewis Gaddis points out, this tradition started with John Quincy Adams, who laid the foundations for the expansion of America, and it continues today.8
This does not mean America needs to maintain a modern day empire, as some critics claim we are doing. We do not have an empire, nor do we seek one. We are not called to be the world’s policeman or to necessarily engage in nation-building around the world. In countries where we fight, our goal is to attain freedom for the people living there and then to bring our troops home. We only keep troops long-term in places like Germany, Japan, and South Korea at the request of those governments. They are there to preserve those nations’ freedom and independence, not to enslave those peoples to any mythical American empire. Once again, this is a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of our nation. John Quincy Adams reminded us that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” If we did so, he warned, “she might become the dictatress of the world” and would “be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”9
We are threatened by murderous ideologies—namely radical Islam—which spring from evil in the human heart. But it’s hard to develop a sound national security strategy when the administration is too paralyzed by political correctness to even name the ideology that threatens us or to acknowledge the existence of evil. They instead want to focus on the “root causes” of terrorism, which are often identified as poverty and ignorance. With this view, fighting terrorism becomes less a military battle and more a grand attempt at international social work. As Barack Obama wrote in the Hyde Park Herald shortly after the 9/11 attacks, terrorists suffer from an “absence of empathy” that “grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.”10 This view was again evident in 2008 when Obama, then a presidential candidate, called for increasing our security through a new Marshall Plan that would double our foreign aid for efforts such as fighting global poverty and eradicating diseases.11
These views are echoed by President Obama’s Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice. In an academic article published in 2005, Rice and co-author Corinne Graff posit that terrorism is “a threat borne of both oppression and deprivation.” Wars are largely the result of poverty, they say. “The risk of conflict onset rises and its average duration increases with decreasing per capita GDP, rates of economic growth, and secondary school enrollment, or with higher child mortality rates.”12
Unfortunately for Obama and Rice, empirical research shows the modern Islamic terrorist is not typically some poor, ignorant soul. Professor Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania, a psychiatrist formerly with the U.S. Navy and CIA, analyzed 500 al Qaeda members. He discovered most of these terrorists are “well-educated, married men from middle- or upper-class families, in their mid-20s and psychologically stable.” In his book Understanding Terror Networks, Sageman reports that three-quarters of the al Qaeda members he studied are from the upper or middle class and fully 63 percent went to college, “compared with the 5-6% that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.” As he puts it, “The typical recruit to al-Qaeda is Western-educated and has a wealthy, professional background.”13
Most of the terrorists came from a small number of wealthy Arab countries or from immigrant groups living in the West. Many were like British-born terrorist Omar Sheikh, who was educated at a private school before heading to Afghanistan.
Terrorism scholar Peter Bergen has also studied the demographics of terrorists and found no evidence that poverty or lack of education play any role. “We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering,” he wrote with Swati Pandey in the New York Times. “In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators’ educational levels are available—the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002—53% of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52% of Americans have been to college. The terrorists, in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well-educated as many Americans.”14
Strangely enough, Islamic terrorists often hail from the richest Middle Eastern nations—fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia—while dirt poor Muslim countries like Mali, Bangladesh, and Niger produce few if any terrorists.15
Scott Atran, in a more narrow investigation of suicide bombers, found that most suicide bombers are well-educated and have a generally higher socio-economic status. Many had graduate degrees and well-paying jobs before they chose to murder innocent civilians in suicide attacks.16
Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to cling to the “poverty causes terrorism” theory because it supports the social work approach to national security that it favors. They sometimes call this “soft power.” While I’m all for using every aspect of our strength to fight terrorism, soft power alone is not going to protect us from regimes and terrorist organizations that want to destroy us. Ronald Reagan would really have gotten a good laugh at the notion of “soft power.” He knew that “soft power” is only effective in containing evil regimes when you have the credible threat of hard power to back it up.
If the Obama administration were to admit that Islamic terrorists are not motivated by poverty but rather by an evil ideology, that would require a paradigm shift in the way it approaches terrorism. They’d have to admit the existence of evil, name the enemy, and acknowledge that military power rather than more anti-poverty programs must be the central means to fight and win.
As we engage and defeat our enemies on the battlefield, we also need to win the battle of ideas by projecting confidence in our values, history, and our way of life. Our president has made a bad habit of apologizing to foreign audiences for America’s supposed transgressions. This groveling needs to end—now. The American president must proudly represent the world’s greatest democracy to the world. It is naïve to think these apologies gain us respect—they simply convey a dangerous lack of confidence. We also need to begin making it clear that our words mean something. If we threaten Iran with consequences when it continues developing nuclear weapons, it should not mean, “Oh, okay, you crossed that red line, but here’s a new one, and hopefully you’ll respect our wishes this time.” If we draw a line in the sand, we need to be willing to follow it up with action.
We won the Cold War without firing a shot because we projected strength and stood up to the Soviet Union on every front. We countered its expansion everywhere, supported dissidents and freedom fighters, and perhaps most importantly, we proudly proclaimed the superiority of western individualism and liberty. Today, we need to say loudly and clearly that America harbors no ill will against Muslims, but that we will fight radical Islam everywhere until it no longer threatens us.
The president should also declare much more emphatically our solidarity with dissidents suffering in Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. I recall a story about Natan Sharansky, a Soviet dissident who later became interior minister and deputy prime minister of Israel. He was in a Soviet prison when he heard that President Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Although Reagan’s remarks sent American liberals into fits of apoplexy, Sharansky leapt for joy—Reagan’s speech emboldened him and other dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. I have no doubt there are Sharanskys in Cuba, North Korea, and Iran who would benefit from knowing that America stands with them.
Terrorism gives a small group of motivated, educated, and well-funded fanatics the potential for sowing massive destruction in the United States. To steal a phrase from Winston Churchill, never have so many had so much to fear from the actions of so few. But we need to remember that resorting to terrorism is actually a sign of weakness. They have to use fear, terror, and mass murder to advance their agenda because most people around the world reject it. America has to be confident we are on the winning side and stop apologizing for being ther
e. As Dean Acheson once warned, “No people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”17
I believe America is freedom, and therefore the American ideal is the hope of people all across this planet. I will never apologize for America. And I know that the American people still believe in the power and promise of America. Once, while I was waiting at the airport to meet some of our soldiers returning from Iraq, I saw an older man standing by himself on the tarmac. I walked up to him, shook his hand, and asked what he was doing there. He explained that when he had returned from serving in Vietnam, no one greeted him at the airport. And he had vowed then and there that he would turn out to that airport whenever soldiers were returning from war, to make sure someone was there to thank them. That’s America.
CHAPTER 16
IT’S THE CULTURE, STUPID
Remember the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”? It was a Clinton-era homage to the notion that one must reduce all political comments to the eighth grade level. We hear the same argument from political strategists today. And just like in the 1990s, it’s not true.
I’ve spent a lot of my life in public service worrying about budgets, money, waste, taxes, and the economy. All these issues are vitally important. And make no mistake, when the economy is suffering, as it is today, that is the only thing on the voters’ minds. As marketing and campaign strategy goes, “It’s the economy, stupid” is genius. After all, it helped get a president elected.
In fact, I often gather my entire cabinet and staff for a leadership series where we hear from leaders in industry, politics, government, and the arts. We recently had a session with the inventor of the “It’s the economy, stupid” phrase, Democratic strategist James Carville, one of Louisiana’s favorite sons and a brilliant political strategist. Our session with Carville and his wife, former Republican strategist Mary Matalin, was fascinating and informative.
