Training to win: Yesterday I was on the phone with Bob Graham and Gary Hart — no, really, I was. It was a teleconference in which Pensito Review was invited to participate along with a bunch of other on-line entities. The call was set up by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, who currently serves as ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and as a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
The purpose of the call was to alert the on-line community to the launch of a new political action committee whose purpose is to help Democrats win in the mid-terms and hopefully get one back in the White House in ’08. It’s SecureUS PAC, and it appears on the surface at least to be a good idea that potentially could make a big difference.
SecureUS provides a mechanism to train Democratic candidates and encumbents to be experts in the areas of national security and intelligence. Karl Rove thought he carved out that territory for the Repugs in the 2006 elections last week, but the folks at SecureUS figure it’s time for the Democrats to get “smart and tough” on national security policy.
The organization has contacted more than 50 candidates and has asked them to complete questionnaires to evaluate their suitability for the SecureUS program.
Harman listed the issues the Democrtatic Party “needs to own”:
- An exit strategy for Iraq that promotes true power sharing
- Nuclear proliferation
- Accurate, actionable and timely intelligence
- A strategy for homeland security
- An energy independence strategy
Ex-senator, ex-governor and former presidential candidate Bob Graham and ex-senator and former presidential candidate Gary Hart are board members and will help train candidates beginning April 3 in Washington. The other board members include:
- Graham Allison — Founding dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. For three decades he has been a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy with a special interest in terrorism. He served as special advisor to the Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense in Bill Clinton’s first administration.
- Richard Holbrooke — Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City and the Economic Club of New York. He is a board member of American International Group and the National Endowment for Democracy and is chairman of International Rescue Committee and Refugees International.
- Claudia Kennedy — Retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and the first woman to hold a three-star rank in the army. She has served in the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. at the Directorate of Training in Washington, D.C.; as Director of Intelligence, G2, Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Ga.; as Deputy Commander and Assistant Commandant at U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; and Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence at Army Headquarters in Washington.
- William Perry — Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor at Stanford University in the School of Engineering and the Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration of Stanford and Harvard universities. He was a professor at Stanford from 1988 to 1993, when he was the co-director of the Center for International Security and Arms Control. He served as U.S. Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton 1994 to 1997, and Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1993 to 1994.
Graham and Hart gave some insight into the kind of critical thinking they plan to impart to their trainees: “We are going to teach the thought processes that lead to good judgment,” said Graham.
“National security policy is and will be the central issue of 2006,” said Graham. “We need to look at the issue through a telescope, not a microscope. The microscopic view asks how we get out of Iraq; the telescopic view asks how do we win the global war on terrorism.”
Graham said the most serious mistake the Bush administration made after 9/11 was to move attention away from al Qaida in Afghanistan and focus on Saddam Hussein in Iraq. “That was a weak and vascillating decision that we are paying a high price for,” he said.
Graham noted that the current Republican approach to Bush’s vaunted war on terror is modeled along the lines of our Cold War strategy toward the Soviet Union. He says that kind of intelligence-gathering and security structure will not work in today’s world.
“We knew the Soviet Union well. Their structure was a mirror image of our structure,” Graham said. “But we don’t know Hezbollah or al Qaida; we don’t speak their language; we don’t know how they think. They are non-nation states operating from a completely different set of values.”
Graham set forth three areas in which he says the U.S. desperately needs to improve:
1) Human intelligence — Our intelligence-gathering structure is too reliant on machines. We need to develop more and better human intelligence resources instead.
2) Rebuild relations with foreign inteligence agencies — Relations with our allies, especially Russia and our NATO partners, have been “shattered” and that has weakened our intelligence-gathering and -sharing capabilities.
3) Hold a national debate on security versus civil liberties — The Bush administration has distorted the public’s view of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Graham says the act is different now, that it has been updated and in its current form is capable of balancing security needs against civil rights.
“We are not prepared for another terrorist attack — Katrina proved that,” said Hart. “The Department of Homeland Security is in total chaos and leaderless. Our seaports and borders are permeable, and we have cells of terrorists in this country and we don’t know who tthey are or where they are.”
Hart dismissed Bush’s reasoning for the war: “The president said we’re fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. He’s wrong — we’re training terrorists in Iraq. Insurgents just want us out of their country. They won’t follow us to America if we pull out of Iraq. But jihadists want to kill us.”
Hart said he has been trying unsuccessfully to focus mainstream media attention on what he says is mounting evidence that the U.S. is building permanent military facilities in Iraq. “Watch out for a new Iraqi government inviting us to stay — at our request — which is the same mistake the French made in Indochina,” he said.
The teleconference wrapped up with promises from Harman and the two board members to participate in the weblogs through guest postings and to provide updates on SecureUS to the 14 or so citizen journalists who dialed in to the call.
I am glad to see this article and the PAC. Now, can we get some candidates with backbones and blather-filters to run? Right now I am discouraged with our Dems who I am abut to rename the dumbs-as in deaf, dumb and disorganized.
Good! I am all for this. I’m just sick that the republicans have consistantly voted against making our infrastucture more secure and then have the nerve to say they are strong on national defense.
It sure would be easier if the “liberal” press printed the voting records of those that have voted against port security, air cargo scanning and other issues that directly effect our security. I hope this pac is a step in that direction.
There is an old story about locking barn doors AFTER the horses have been stolen…..
From where this old hillbilly sets it looks like the “Four Horsemen”-Bush, Cheney, Rummy and Condiliar are each up on a “horse” stolen long since and are riding hell bent to their personal “Rapture”, so best wishes for good luck all you good folks!