“Over There!” Why we must (still) go abroad to Secure the Homeland

“THE WORLD IS A SORRY MESS.”  Former CIA Director Porter Goss calls this statement his “First Rule.” When he was at the CIA, he reminded himself of it daily, knowing that if he didn’t, his personal outlook would imperceptibly and perpetually brighten to a point where he would no longer expect tragedies to occur. He knew that optimism, a critical element in most human success, was also a critical vulnerability.

Without constant reminders to the contrary, people unconsciously begin believing all the things they desperately want to believe: that Al Qaida is “decimated,” for example, or that if we would just reduce America’s “footprint” around the world, the “angry countries” will stop feeling threatened by us, and having lost the source of their ire, will move to become responsible members of the international community.

To be sure, American governments sometimes intervene in conflicts where their actions ultimately make no difference at all...or even make matters worse. Extracting ourselves from those situations makes good sense. But American isolationism as an overarching goal in and of itself is dangerous and impractical. It’s dangerous, because whenever evil is left alone, it doesn’t shrink; it grows. And ignoring evil just makes it grow faster. It’s impractical, because America’s citizens and interests are global; isolation is impossible. 

Even if isolation was possible, it’s still much less costly over the long run in terms of lives and national treasure to counter evil as it’s forming than waiting to take it on once it’s matured into a well-organized and devastatingly destructive force. Think of American influence and power as your lawnmower and evil as your grass – you don’t want to wait too long to mow the lawn...

We fight evil because evil exists – human beings are an imperfect species.  Crime, callous greed, corruption, xenophobia, and deviant cruelty will always be with us.  We can’t eliminate them, but we can certainly beat them back. Good vs. Evil is mankind’s perpetual struggle – a war that must be waged, because as Edmund Burke recognized centuries ago, “Evil thrives whenever good people do nothing.” 

So the question isn’t whether we should fight evil; it’s how we should fight it. And the answer to that question lies in picking strategies that will provide the most security for the least costs. Our Golden Rule for Security should always be, “Don’t commit to an intervention unless delay means that even more money and more troops will be required to achieve the same objectives later on.” Every potential intervention requires careful study; and what makes sense in one place at one time might not make sense at another time.

So far, the decision-makers of the West have calculated that countries like Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, should be confronted “later,” if they should ever be confronted at all. A decade ago, however, Iraq was judged differently. Decision-makers decided that the costs of countering Saddam Hussein at some distant point in the future (after he had continued dedicating revenues from his multi-trillion dollar oil reserves to his nefarious global purposes) would likely be greater than taking him on then.

So they took him on. And now Iraq is free…with functional government institutions and historic economic growth combining to help the Iraqi people preserve their newly-won freedoms. And the world is a better place for it. 

These days, isolationism simply won’t keep us safe. Thanks in part to social media, there are no more firebreaks – evil spreads too fast. So we must vigilantly monitor world events, and judiciously choose the moments when, with the help of our friends, we can nip evil in the bud before it grows too ominous and destructive. 

Ironically, we sometimes confront evil “over there” so we can preserve more of our civil liberties “back here.” Knowing Goss’s First Rule and the fact that evil’s natural state is expansion, we can either choose to go on offense, and keep evil beaten back abroad, or we can wait for it to come to us and play defense. 

Relying more on defense would require expanding the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) approach to airport security to most or our major public venues – stadiums, arenas, racetracks, malls, schools, and churches. Fans attending the Super Bowl, for example could expect two to three hour cues at the Super Dome’ s “TSA-style” security checkpoints before being allowed in the dome.

Modern security is one big tradeoff: EITHER we intervene abroad OR expand the TSA to everyday life…or do a mixture of both. There’s no “wrong” answer here – just a choice we have to make. And remember:  choosing “None of the above” will get us all killed…