New Democrat Update - October 2001
THE DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
The events of September 11 struck at the heart of every American, resulting in a new world view and its dangerous threats. Our thoughts are with the innocent victims, as well as their families and friends. Out of our shock, grief, terrible loss and outrage has come American unity, community, and a new sense of national purpose.
Our country has a proud history of responding to crises with swift action. The Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march led to the Voting Rights Act. The Great Depression and World War II were met by the New Deal and the largest mobilization of people and resources in history.
Americans realize that, to get any meaning out of this awful catastrophe, all of us must take a stand and do everything we can to minimize the chances that something like this will ever happen again. Our future actions to strengthen freedom and security must ensure that the victims of September 11 did not die in vain.
DEFENDING THE HOMELAND
For too long, America has had a national security system perfectly suited to winning the last war, specifically the Cold War. Congress and the Pentagon have protected old weapon systems, preserved ineffective bureaucracies and maintained outdated force structures. The status quo has repeatedly blocked new ideas and technologies while turf wars between the services stand in the way of lean focused joint-operational military.
To paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln, we must think and act anew. Earlier this year, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, has produced a comprehensive blueprint to do just that (the last sweeping reassessment was conducted in 1947 at the end of World War II leading to the creation of the Air Force, Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council).
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on March 21, Hart emphasized "No U.S. national security strategy that meets the needs of the world we now live in can be designed and implemented with significant changes to the national security apparatus itself. Put differently, without serious management reform, attempts at serious policy reform will be unsustainable." The Commission's number one conclusion in its first report in 1999 - "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us."
One of the report's very first recommendations is to create a new, "National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security." The agency would combine the Federal Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol, as well as 40 other components of the federal government.
It looks like the administration plans to create a White House-based council, headed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, to coordinate the activities of 46 separate agencies. While a welcome first step, that falls short of giving Ridge the strong budgetary and operational authority he will need to be successful.
As urged in a Newsday op-ed by Elaine Karmarck, former director of the Clinton-Gore Administration's Reinventing Government Initiative, the NHSA's front-line workers should also have "unfettered, real-time access to the intelligence obtained by the FBI and the CIA." Later she writes, "The rapidity with which the government identified the terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks is testament to the fact that many of the pieces of this terrorist conspiracy existed in the system. But information after the fact is worth only a fraction of what it is worth before the fact."
The Bush administration and Congress should build on this first step and boldly create an independent cabinet-level NHSA. Washington should also implement the report's other Executive Branch reforms to tackle 21st century national security threats.
In normal times, this ambitious agenda would represent very significant political challenges and endless bureaucratic battles. But September 11 should have changed all that.
CITIZEN-SOLIDERS
The Commission's report also says that homeland security should be the primary mission of the National Guard - one of the key "on the ground" responders to natural and manmade disasters. Accordingly, the Guard "should be organized, properly trained, and adequately equipped to undertake that mission."
Here in Colorado, the Guard needs better tools to recruit/retain, train, equip, and empower our nearly 5,000 citizen-soldiers and airmen. Currently, we depend ever more heavily on recruits drawn from the one-third of high school graduates with no plans for college, and we are paying them at levels that tend to reduce the resources needed to reward and retain career non-commissioned and commissioned officers. Adequate staffing levels are dangerously low at too many locations around the state.
The state legislature can help recruitment/retention efforts by waiving tuition at Colorado higher education institutions for service in the National Guard. The legislature should also strengthen the Guard by:
Providing our citizen-soldiers a $200 bonus for every new recruit they find. Ohio found this strategy to be highly cost-effective.Enacting "Good Samaritans" legislation exempting National Guardsmen from legal liability when providing Coloradans emergency or medical services. Soldiers saving civilians and serving our country should not have to worry about civil lawsuits.These initiatives provide upward mobility opportunities and, maybe more importantly, help reconnect a broad cross section of young Coloradans with their civic obligation to give something back to their country for the blessings of life in a free society. That's something all of us should appreciate more these days.