Wednesday, September 19, 2001
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Wednesday, September 19, 2001 |
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Where will the next threat come from? By DAVE HAMRICK Like all of you, I'm in shock and in mourning, and looking for ways to help. May God touch the victims and their families with comfort that defies human understanding. Like everyone else, I hope our government finds those responsible and does what is necessary. I won't be dancing in the streets when I see the CNN footage. I'll be praying for those victims, too. But if we don't defend ourselves at a time like this, we're begging for more. And now, I hope it's not too soon for this, but I can't help but think back on Pearl Harbor and all the other times we've been caught off guard and wonder if we'll ever learn. Neal Boortz read an e-mail from an eighth grader the other day that blew me away. One particular part showed me that this young person is wise far beyond his years. "What bothers me most is that I know this will go down in history books. I know that the next generation, my children and grandchildren, will learn about this in school. The part about this that bothers me is that, like my generation, they won't care. To them, this will only mean another test. I know that they will not truly feel the hurt that every child, preteen and teenager is sharing with our mothers and fathers. And this makes me feel guilty, because of the way I judge the past. I feel bad for all the people that have been hurt this week, but now, I honestly feel bad for all the people over all the years that have ever felt pain like I and my friends are feeling now." Here's a 13-year-old with a sense of history. But what a horrible way to gain such insight! I agree with him, though. The most frustrating thing is that we never learn. I've watched and listened and read the accounts of all the extra security measures being trotted out for the flying public with mixed emotions. Of course we have to do all this, but part of me sees it as mere psychological salve for our fears. It doesn't seem logical that terrorists would try the same type of attack again, now that our guard is up in that arena. But if they do, there's been some speculation that even the most intense security measures can be beaten with the kinds of methods our attackers used. But what worries me the most is that we're focusing on the fire that's already out. What we need to be thinking about is where the next fire might start. I've been ridiculed on occasion for insisting that our conventional military forces need to be beefed up. "There's no nation that's going to take on the U.S. Why waste so much of our resources on something we're never going to use?" So goes the reasoning. "Why worry about a missile defense?" That's another. The real threat is from other ways of delivering a nuclear bomb, or from biological warfare, they say. I repeat. When will we ever learn? You want to know where the next attack is going to come from? It's going to come from the direction in which we aren't looking. We're like the Dutch lad with his finger plugging a leak in the dike, only there are a lot more leaks than one finger can plug. We have to try and find the holes in airport security and plug them, but if we focus on that and turn away from some other threat, we haven't accomplished anything. What's the answer? Simple. Be looking in every direction. We need missile defense if it's possible. We don't need to sell the farm to pay for it until it's been proven that it will work, but if that proof comes, we need it, at least on a limited basis. We need more and better spies, with the freedom to do what they have to do to detect future threats. We need conventional forces that can repel invaders, and which also can go into hostile territory to eliminate those future threats that our spies have detected. We need defenses against biological weapons. We need a coherent, cohesive, defensible foreign policy that wins us as many friends as possible. We're going to need them, and they're going to need us. Some day, I pray, all nations will beat their swords into plow shares. Until then, we need to keep ours sharpened.
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