The way to make us safer
For years the West did too little to combat the terror being mounted and waged against it. On 9/11, we saw the consequences of that approach. That's why the commission laid out a strategy of ensuring that terrorist groups do not find sanctuary in "the least governed, most lawless places in the world." Rather, we must keep them constantly on the run, isolating rogue states and unstable regimes that offer terrorists succor or sanctuary.
This new terrorism puts a premium on intelligence if terrorists are truly to be rooted out before they can wreak death and destruction on us. The 9/11 commission is surely right to recommend a single congressional place for intelligence, oversight, and review, either through a joint committee or, at most, through a permanent standing committee in each chamber. Such an approach will require Congress to abjure the kind of pork-barrel politics that even now results in the disgracefully disproportionate allocation of security funds that has Wyoming receiving seven times as much per capita as New York.
The self-interest of turf-conscious lawmakers must not stand in the way of reform of our intelligence community and a more sensible allocation of security money. Failure here means that the promise of the 21st century would disintegrate into a time in which Americans live in fear and the quality of our life as we have known it erodes day by day.
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