Tom Ridge and Homeland Security. (04/04/2002)
It has become increasingly difficult to understand the Bush Administration's policies with regard to the war against terrorism and the need for homeland security. One problem is the refusal of Bush's director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, to speak openly to Congress, and by extension to the American people, about how he plans to spend the 38 billion dollars that were appropriated to fund his office. Recently, according to the NY Times (Elizabeth Becker, "Ridge to Brief 2 House Panels, but Rift With Senate Remains," 04/03/2002), Ridge has agreed to submit to informal meetings with two House committees with the intention of disclosing some of the things he has done so far and some of the issues he intends to address in the future. The fact that these meetings will be "informal" means that they will occur behind "closed doors" so that nothing of the substance of his disclosures will become public knowledge. Ridge still refuses to speak to any Senate committee under any circumstance. One reason implied for the decision to address the House but not the Senate, of course, concerns the fact that the House is still controlled by the Republicans and the Senate by the Democrats. This means that the Administration sees the House "hearings" into the issues of homeland security as being safe in Republican hands, as opposed to dangerous, if the same right were to be granted to the Senate. Access to Ridge, therefore, and to all issues of homeland security, seem to be balanced between a notion that Republicans can be trusted with knowledge about the war against terrorism but Democrats cannot. The real point here is that meetings in the House can be kept secret by vote of the majority of its members (Republican) but that same guarantee does not exist in the Senate which is controlled by the Democratic majority. What this suggests is that knowledge of Ridge's activities must be kept out of the public square and away from the people his programs are supposed to protect.
In public statements made to the media recently, as reported by Elizabeth Becker, Ridge has acknowledge a growing demand for him to testify, which may account for the "closed door" House meetings, but continues to deny, in Becker's words, "that the conflict in the Middle East could pose a threat to civilians in the United States." She says, furthermore, that
"he rejected any suggestion that increased vigilance was needed here because of the Israeli-Palestinian violence. He said the nation remained at the same 'yellow' level of alert as before the step-up in Palestinian suicide bombings and the resulting Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian territories."
She goes on to report that Ridge claims there was "no new threat based exclusively on credible information, none," and that nothing new has surfaced to indicate that any terrorists are "planning new attacks in the United States as a result of the Middle East fighting." (The first quote belongs to Ridge; the second to Becker.) The problems with Ridge's statements are at least two-fold: on the one hand, many people in possession of knowledge about the motives behind the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden included, have said that the assault was meant as a response against US support for Israel in its escalating war on the West Bank and in Gaza against Palestinians. Bush has consistently denied that connection in his public statements for the past six months, preferring, for some reason, to look for and articulate other less specific motivations behind the attacks. Ridge, therefore, is simply following the Administration's position. More troubling, on the other hand, is the fact that just two days ago confirmation was published that Abu Zubaydah, who may be the highest ranking member of Al Qaeda's planning commission, was captured in Pakistan and that he was actively engaged at the time in coordinating future attacks against US interests worldwide, including some in the Homeland itself over which Ridge has security control. Zubaydah is also a Palestinian. The point here is that Ridge denies new threats just after information is released that they most certainly do exist. Ridge, it seems, is forced to deny those threats because to admit them would simultaneously undermine the Administration's claim that fighting in the Middle East does not cause, does not influence, does not inspire the direction of terrorist acts against the US. Bush's refusal to allow, or admit, any linkage between terrorist attacks against the US and the spreading conflict in the Middle East seems to imply that his policy decisions are being held hostage by a situation over which he believes he has no control. He is either unwilling, or unable, to fashion a resolution to the war in the West Bank and, as long as he continues to ignore it as a cause of terrorist acts, those acts will continue to escalate.
Another aspect of the same problem can be seen in the apparent distinction that is consistently drawn between individual acts of terror perpetrated by suicide bombers in Israel and the events that occurred on September 11th. The 19 individuals who flew the airliners into the WTC towers were nothing more nor less than suicide bombers. The fact that the bombs they strapped to their bodies were commercial airliners does not change the effects caused by the explosions when the planes crashed into the towers. There seems to be a tendency in the Bush Administration, however, to perceive that fact on some special ground of ideological privilege, that it happened to us and not to Israelis, which conceals the obvious connection between Middle Eastern suicide bombers in Israel and the events that unfolded in New York and Washington. The greatest danger with a policy of conducting government in secrecy is the fact that too many points-of-view are excluded from decision-making by the fear that someone outside your circle will find fault with your intentions. Bush does this when he insists on pursuing Saddam Hussein even in the absence of support from any other nation in his fragile coalition to fight terrorism. Ultimately, his one-sided approach to every issue will leave the US with no alternative but to fight alone, since his single-minded focus on Iraq, while virtually ignoring the Palestinian crisis, has already alienated every Arab state in the region and has created serious rifts with his other (European, Asian) allies as well.