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As president-elect Barack Obama plans his assumption of duties in January, the horrific development in Mumbai, India is a vital reminder of the terrorist kind of world we live in: 179 dead in Mumbai; 52 in the London bombings; 191 in the Madrid train attacks; 202 in Bali and 2,973 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on 9/11. Shortly after the Mumbai attacks, the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism claimed that a “chemical, biological or nuclear terrorist attack is likely before the end of 2013. Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing.” Are we therefore more secure in 2008, now ready to move into 2009 when we will have a new administration?
Part of the false sense of security which many Americans feel is that we have not been attacked in seven years. There is little doubt that the efforts of President Bush have played a role in no attack in 7 years, but we will never know how many plots were destroyed, uncovered or simply never even got started because of the security measures and proactive actions of the Bush administration. I suspect that history will be much kinder to Bush than current commentators or politicians are today. The columnist Michel Gerson has this perceptive counsel: “To assume the presidency is also to assume a responsibility for the safety of Americans that Congress and interest groups will never feel directly. Whatever the past debates, much of the legal framework of the war on terror has already been clarified by judicial and congressional intervention.” Mumbai is a timely reminder to the president elect. He must find a way to balance the security of the American people with our basic commitment as a nation to rights, due process of law and the Constitution. Many people have been appalled by practices such as waterboarding. For many, Guantanamo is a symbol of excess and has become a diplomatic nightmare. But have these thwarted further terrorist attacks against the US? I doubt we will ever know the answer to that question. But this new president must remember that one of his most basic responsibilities is to protect the American people. He has surrounded himself with smart people, few of them from the leftwing of his party. He seems to be nominating people who will govern from the center, not the left. That is good news. But the real test of his leadership is going to come when he seeks to balance liberty and security. We do not know yet how he will balance these two. During the campaign he seemed to indicate that he would tilt toward liberty, away from security. But his foreign policy team gives reason to believe that he might seek to balance the two more carefully. Mumbai is a critical and necessary reminder that the stakes are very high for this new president and his administration. He alone is responsible for the security of the American people. May God give him wisdom and discernment. We should be praying for him in the weeks and months to come on this subject. He will need it.
See Gerson's essay in the Washington Post (5 December 2008). |
