The Challenge

On that terrible day, the world stood united with us. Americans rallied to support their president. The pursuit of bin Laden and al Qaeda and the invasion in Afghanistan received international support. We toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship in Iraq. Potential terrorists have been hunted, detained and killed in countries across the world. But Americans are less secure.

The president’s war of “choice” in Iraq has been a costly debacle. Allies have been alienated. Hatred of America in the Muslim world has reached an unprecedented height. Bin Laden is still loose, and terrorist networks have metastasized, recruiting over the web and building adherents among Muslims inflamed by the U.S. occupation in Iraq. We have traduced our own principles in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Pentagon studies warn that our military is stretched thin, with recruitment difficult and retirements of key veterans rising. Generals on the ground report there is no military strategy for victory in Iraq, and the threat from Iran grows every day. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission gives the administration failing grades on vital areas of homeland security. Corruption and cronyism sabotage reconstruction in Iraq as much as it affects emergency response at home. The American people and the Iraqi people both want the U.S. to leave Iraq, but the president refuses to go.

In the midst of this debacle, other emerging, real security concerns are recklessly slighted—the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, loose nukes, catastrophic climate change, global pandemics, unsustainable trade and financial imbalances, the growing divide of rich and poor in a world of global communications. The United States needs a new approach to our national security.