The New Democratic Review: Terrorism and Democrats

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September 15, 2006

Terrorism and Democrats

Terrorism should be a Democratic issue.

Just a few short years ago, Republicans were fond of distinguishing their approach to terrorism from that taken by Democrats (i.e., Clinton) by chanting it’s “total war,” not police work. The argument ran that Democrats were too timid to go beyond traditional methods of criminal investigation and instead saw terrorism as a problem for the justice system. What was needed, they said, was decisive lethal force.

Well, that’s a contrast they don’t seem to draw much anymore.

Maybe it’s because total war doesn’t look quite so effective these days. Or maybe it’s that the terrorism strategy de jour is, of course, police work—albeit a brutal and stupid version of it, torture. Bring back the rubber hoses—traditional indeed.

But if Republicans are sheepish about making the comparison, Democrats shouldn’t be. Whatever successes there have been in fighting terrorism, have all come as the result of smart, energetic and methodical investigative work. Bombs and bellicosity have only exacerbated the crisis.

Now, the need for intelligence is even clearer. Graham Allison, writing in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, makes the case that nuclear terrorism is all but inevitable.

In sum, my best judgment is that based on current trends, a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is more likely than not in the decade ahead. Developments in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea leave Americans more vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11 today than we were five years ago. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has said that he thinks that I underestimate the risk. In the judgment of most people in the national security community, including former Sen. Sam Nunn, the risk of a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil is higher today than was the risk of nuclear war at the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Reviewing the evidence, Warren Buffett, the world's most successful investor and a legendary oddsmaker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events like earthquakes, has concluded: "It's inevitable. I don't see any way that it won't happen." [18]

But can it be prevented? Yes. But only with heightened resolve, imaginative diplomacy, and some very smart investigative work.

Posted by stevemack at September 15, 2006 03:07 PM

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