THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 79, April 20, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE CONSEQUENCE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS ON AMERICA
& AMERICANS: SWIFT & DEADLY RETALIATION
MUST BE GUARANTEED
By Brian T. Kennedy
FULL STORY:
In his news conference on Tuesday night, April 13, a reporter pressed President Bush to discuss "what mistakes might have been
made." The President answered, quite rightly, that, prior to September 11, 2001, the country was not on a "war footing" and that the
real culprit in the attacks was Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qa'ida. Other members of the Bush administration have reiterated the
President's sentiment in testimony before the 9-11 Commission.
Two things are remarkable about this. The first is that this answer may somehow absolve the President and his government for the
ongoing failure of U.S. intelligence services to address the problem of terrorism. What the President might have said is that there is
no such thing as perfect intelligence. There never has been and never will be. We can reorganize the CIA and the FBI and rebuild
our human intelligence capabilities, but, because we live in a free and open country, we will always be vulnerable to attack. What
we can do is punish those countries that sponsor terrorism and those terrorist cells that exist in known places throughout the world.
Prior to 9-11, this had not been done sufficiently. We had not retaliated for the bombings of the Marines in Beirut in 1983; the
terrorist attacks in Europe in 1985 and 1986; the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; the bombings of U.S. embassies
in Africa in 1996; and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. These were not failures of intelligence. These were failures of U.S.
presidents to punish those terrorists abroad who meant to do America harm. Little intelligence would have been required other
than knowing whom it was we should punish. But retaliate we did not, and 9/11 was a consequence of our lack of resolve.
For some inexplicable reason, the Bush administration is defensive on a point it need not be. It is not this administration's fault that
the intelligence services were disorganized or that previous administrations had failed to act. President Bush is doing his best now
to right the course and punish those who mean us harm.
Second, a common theme emerging from the 9-11 Commission's hearings seems to be that we ought to have declared war against
terrorists prior to 9/11. On this point we agree. It was 10 years ago that our friend Bruce Herschensohn made the case for declaring
war on terrorism in his book, Lost Trumpets, which he wrote for the Claremont Institute.
Since then, we have continued to argue that, only by making war against terrorists, can you hope to defeat them, a point that
resonates with the commonsense of the American people, if not the bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department. I reprint here an
excerpt from Herschensohn's argument:
"It will be prime time; exactly 9:00 P.M. in Washington, D.C., when the door of the Chamber will open and the
doorkeeper will yell it out, 'Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.' The applause will be immediate,
as the audience of Senators and Representatives and the Supreme Court and the members of the President's
Cabinet and his staff rise, and the applause will last through the end of the President's journey to the podium
and beyond. And the Speaker of the House will say 'Members of the Congress, I have the high privilege and
distinct honor of presenting to you, the President of the United States.' And again the standing ovation.
"There will be a greatness, not only in the moment, but in this President, with or without the traditional ovation.
"'Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Distinguished Members of the Senate and House of Representatives,
honored guests and fellow citizens: As President of the United States of America, I have requested this Joint
Session of the Congress to ask this body for a declaration of war against an enemy of the United States of
America -- a hostile force that is also an enemy of most of the inhabitants of this planet. That enemy is
Terrorism.
"'As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once came to this chamber to request a declaration of war because of a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor, I am here for a similar declaration, because of repeated surprise attacks on our citizens
that have taken place throughout the world. The victims of those surprise attacks have been powerless, and
they have been innocent of any crimes. They have often been murdered because they held a passport issued
by the United States of America.
"'Those attacks have not been a matter of the past alone; we have become much too relaxed in the intermissions
between attacks. They will come again, maybe next year, maybe in the next moment, but they will come again.
And if we do nothing more than we have done, they will escalate in the future. These surprise attacks can come
to any citizen of the United States.
"'But what do I mean by a declaration of war? With precision, what is it I'm requesting?
"'I am requesting that, from your declaration forward, the United States of America will regard Terrorism as a
sovereign state -- as a nation in itself. The Nation of Terrorism is a chain of bases, training camps, safe houses,
and other facilities that dot portions of the map of the world, going into and out of other sovereign states. The
non-contiguous configuration that the Nation of Terrorism has enjoyed has been a shield since its
citizens-by-choice have assumed that they would always be regarded as part of other sovereign states that
surround them. That shield must be a thing of the past….
"'As Commander-in-Chief, I will see to it that, if any American is terrorized; indeed if one hair on the head of an
American is touched in hostility, there will be an immediate retaliation by the Government of the United States
of America against Terrorism, with our military directed to strike at any unannounced terrorist target we think
appropriate within that archipelago of 'islands' that have been built and inhabited within the existing borders
of other sovereign states.
"'In short, we will no longer simply search for individuals directly responsible for individual acts of terrorism any
more than in other wars we would search selectively for an individual grenade-thrower on a battlefield. This will
be a clear edict that we are no longer at war against individual terrorists alone when we can find them, but instead,
we are at war against Terrorism and we have found it.
"'When President Roosevelt addressed this body in December of 1941, he did not say: Yesterday we were attacked
at Pearl Harbor, and we are going to do everything possible to find out who those individual pilots, navigators,
and bombardiers were, and capture those men, and bring them to justice. That would have been a guarantee that
we would have lost the war.
"'We must recognize that the Nation of Terrorism has already declared war against the United States and has often
captured our most prized property -- our citizens. As President of the United States, I cannot and will not allow that
to continue or re-start.
"'If terrorists feel that our retaliatory policy puts them at risk of being targeted for individual acts of terrorism that
they did not commit, there is only one option for their future safety: to get out of the terrorism business.
"'My fellow Americans, intermittently, terrorism, including hostage-taking, has been a crime without sufficient
punishment, and often with reward for the hostage-takers. Our policy of searching is done. A new policy of swift
and sure retaliation against the Nation of Terrorism will be in immediate effect after you in the Congress make such
a formal declaration. Let that declaration be a warning, the only warning to be given, that the citizens of the United
States are to be secure against violence on their person wherever they travel throughout the world.'"
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Brian T. Kennedy is President of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy..
The foregoing article by Brian Kennedy was originally published in the April 15, 2004, issue of Precepts, a publication
of the Claremont Institute. The Institute, a Conservative political, cultural, and educational organization in the U.S.A., describes
its central purpose as the mission "to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in
our national life." Committed to American constitutionalism and republicanism as well as representative democracy, the
Institute's mission statement declares: "America's Founders endowed our Republic with sound principles and a framework for
governing that is unmatched in the history of mankind. The prosperity and freedom of America can only be made secure if
they are guided by a return to these basic principles as our country enters the 21st. century."
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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