Genuine security not cheap

by Edward Cone

9-7-03

News & Record

The big question this week is supposed to be: Are you safer now than you were before 9/11?

Well, maybe we are safer, and maybe we're not. Certainly our long-term safety from terrorism is not yet assured. We may feel less safe today because our vulnerability to attack was brutally exposed two years ago, but since forewarned is forearmed, that feeling of insecurity actually makes us safer.

Unfortunately, safety is about more than feelings. It requires action and follow-through. The United States has taken some serious actions since 9/11. The follow-through is what has me worried. What we need to do now is to address the real costs of securing peace abroad and security at home. Until we do that, we're playing a dangerous game.

In terms of addressing the immediate threat of terrorism, there has been progress. The ranks and leadership of al-Qaida have been substantially degraded, and their base in Afghanistan has been taken away. The war in Iraq has delivered a clear signal to other governments that might sponsor terrorism. That was, of course, a primary purpose of the latest war, to park an army next to Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran to let them know we mean business. (And no, the business isn't Halliburton; that's just a happy by-product for the president's friends.)

But Afghanistan is boiling with new Taliban recruits. Iraq is inadequately policed, to the point that we now have to ask the same erstwhile allies we scorned last spring for help in maintaining control on the ground. Our safety is imperiled by the situation in both countries.

Yet somehow our government does not trust us with the truth about these places. They talk about a long-term commitment to rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, but shy away from discussing the real costs. Even the $65 billion plan floated by the White House last week is likely just a beginning. Clearly the price in money and morale of prolonged military actions (including extending duty for National Guard troops) will be large. Still, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice spend their time spinning exaggerated tales of post-World War II resistance in Germany, when the historical analogy they need to explore is the Marshall Plan.

Here in the homeland, security has improved in some areas but hardly changed in others. We all hate standing in line to get on planes, and doing that cavity search on grandma seems a bit over the top, but smuggling a weapon onto a plane these days would seem to be a much greater challenge than it was two years ago. At the same time, our ports are porous. An upcoming investigation by my colleague John McCormick in Baseline magazine shows how port security is much weaker than it needs to be, while managers lack adequate funding for the equipment and people to improve it.

And that, of course, is the rub. All of this stuff is going to be very expensive. The economic facts are not politically convenient for a president who wants to appeal to conservatives to whom spending is an ideological issue. Also, to acknowledge the costs of rebuilding nations and entire regions is to acknowledge the complexity of the situation in those countries, to admit that the factors motivating our enemies, current and potential, might just be more involved than the binary equation of good versus evil.

There is an irony here that goes beyond the dangers caused by half-measures on the things that are supposed to make us safer.

The worst part is that the administration is being mendacious when it doesn't need to lie. Bush is, as he himself might say, "misunderestimating" the resolve of the American public. I think a great many people understand the magnitude of this moment and are ready to sacrifice, to prove themselves a great generation if their leaders would point that way. If Bush won't do it, he may be out of a job next year.

Only an honest accounting of what we are in for, at home and abroad, and a commitment to see our mission through, will make us safer on future anniversaries of the day that showed us how unsafe we really are. It's not going to be cheap, or fast, but it will be worth it.

Edward Cone (efcone@mindspring.com, www.edcone.com) writes a column for the News & Record most Sundays.

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