National Security in the 21st Century: Findings of the Hart-Rudman Commission
Speaker: Warren B. Rudman, U.S. Senate
Moderator: Charles G. Boyd, director, Washington Program, Council on Foreign Relations
Speakers: Lee H. Hamilton
Gary Hart, U.S. Senate
Newt Gingrich, U.S. Congress
September 14, 2001
Council on Foreign Relations
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NG: Chuck, can I just comment for a second? Lee said something that I think I want to explicitly either disagree with or say in a different way and see if in fact we do disagree. It’s very important to distinguish between terrorism based on individual or very, very small group acts, and terrorism which can only function with state sponsorship. The operation against us on Tuesday could not have existed in a world in which terrorists were not harbored, protected and financed by states. Yes, you can get a car bomb somewhere. But if Iran doesn’t pay for Hesbolah, Hesbolah doesn’t have very much money. If there aren’t places that sustain Bin Laden’s forces, if he doesn’t have three training camps in Sudan, if he doesn’t have refuge in Afghanistan, it’s very hard to be successful. Can you do Oklahoma City? Yes. We saw it happen from an American, not a foreigner. Can people who hate you have some impact? Yes. But organized, systematic terrorism, and terrorism we describe, weapons of mass destruction, require states still to this day, with only a few exceptions. And if you looked at the one effort in Japan to use seren(?) gas, done by people without state support, without training, without practice, it is a much more sufferable problem. And what we have today is a definable problem. And I would say what Lee said from a different angle. (A), if all we do is bomb some people, we are very foolish. We need to defeat these organizations, and we need to force the states that sponsor them to quit sponsoring them or replace their regimes. (B), for the Middle East at large, for Muslims at large, we should aggressively be reaching out economically and in other ways to create a better future. If you were a Palestinian whose child was faced with a future Palestinians currently face, you would be in despair.
The United States historically has been a country which offered hope as well as threat. In the end we rebuilt Japan and Germany and Italy, we didn’t just bomb them and walk off. And we have to find a way to reach out to the non-fanatics and say to them, “We want to work to create a better life with you.” This has got to be a serious strategy at a regional level, and not just a series of random military pinpricks. But I don’t think we should kid ourselves. The United States of America and its allies, if they want to, can break the back of state sponsored terrorism. and probably do it within two to three years.
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