What Changed in U.S. Policy Since 9/11?
Dr. Condoleezza Rice Al-Hayat 2004/10/26
About a year after the attacks of September 11th, I was in London, at the American Embassy. Embassy personnel had saved newspapers from September 12, 2001, and mounted the front pages on one of the walls. When I first saw them, I realized that I had never read a single newspaper account of the 9/11 attacks. With all we had to do, there was simply no time.
But as I stood in the Embassy, I could not take my eyes off of those newspapers. The story they told was familiar, yet still bracing: America attacked… thousands of Americans dead… our financial markets at a standstill… central bankers standing by to intervene should markets collapse… American armed forces placed on high alert… Americans fearing follow-up attacks. I remember thinking: the killers who perpetrated those attacks were not merely trying to terrorize the United States. Through their choice of targets they were trying to symbolically bring us down. They chose the center of our economic might… the headquarters of our military power… and seat of our democratic government. These were not criminal acts. They were acts of war, designed to cripple us as a nation. We had been drawn into a global war against a determined enemy.
Now, today there is a debate in our country about what the Global War on Terror calls us to do. For some, it is a limited engagement whose goal is to go after bin Laden and Al Qaeda, assume a defensive posture at home, put it out of our minds and just hope they do not attack us again. They see a narrow struggle against a narrow enemy. This is a fundamental misunderstanding about what happened to us on that fateful September day - a day that should have changed all of us. The Global War on Terror calls us, as President Bush immediately understood, to marshal all elements of our national power to defeat terrorists and the ideology of hatred that sustains them and recruits others to their ranks.
Yes - we must capture or kill bin Laden, and as we meet today bin Laden is on the run because there are U.S. forces, Afghans, Pakistanis and others, hunting him down.
Moreover, more than three-quarters of Al Qaeda's known leaders and associates have been detained or killed. We have frozen millions of dollars of their assets. And we have ended their sanctuary in Afghanistan. Three years ago, that nation was home to dozens of training camps that graduated thousands of trained killers over the course of half a decade. Today, those camps have been destroyed. The Taliban regime, which sheltered and supported Al Qaeda has been overthrown and replaced with a free Afghan government that is helping American soldiers hunt Taliban remnants and Al Qaeda terrorists who still hide in caves.
Yes - we must defend the homeland and make it more secure. We have tightened security at our airports and seaports. We have stockpiled needed medicines and developed a comprehensive plan to improve our national bio-defenses. We have broken down the bureaucratic walls and legal barriers that prevented the sharing of vital threat information between our domestic law enforcement and our foreign intelligence agencies. We have reorganized our government and are reforming our intelligence agencies.
But the terrorists need to be right only once; we must be right 100% of the time. It is an unfair fight to fight this war on defense. The fact is - that unless we change the circumstances that produced this ideology of hatred and hopelessness so great that it causes people to fly planes into buildings and strap suicide bombs to their bodies our children and grandchildren will still be fighting this war decades from now. But if we choose to wage a broad war against this global menace… and if we choose to create a lasting foundation for peace… we can defeat the terrorists and their ideology of murder, and build a better world.
Since 9/11, America has built a coalition of some 90 countries that are sharing intelligence and working closely to combat the threat from transnational terrorism. Together, we have captured or killed thousands of terrorists. We have disrupted terrorist plots and broken up terrorist cells from Europe to the Middle East to Southeast Asia.
Through action and diplomacy, we are also shifting the geo-strategic balance and shrinking the terrorists' world. A fundamental objective of war is to take the enemy's territory and this war is no different. But the way we are taking their territory is different. State sponsors of terror have a choice abandon their support of terror, or face the consequences. The Taliban made the wrong choice.
But other nations have made a responsible choice and are active allies in the war on terrorism. Before September 11, Pakistan was one of the few countries that recognized the Taliban regime. Not long ago, Al Qaeda was actively recruiting in that country without serious opposition. Today, Pakistan's president is a friend and ally, whose government helped capture such killers as Khaled Sheikh Mohamad, the operational planner behind the 9/11 attacks. And Pakistani forces are working hard to round up terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Until recently, terrorists were well established in Saudi Arabia and faced little scrutiny and even less opposition. Today, the Saudi government is shutting down the facilitators and financial supporters of terrorism. And they have captured or killed many top leaders of Al Qaeda's organization within their borders.
The result of these efforts is plain: the terrorists' world continues to get smaller. The places where they can operate with impunity are becoming fewer and fewer. And we will not rest until there is no safe place left for terrorists to hide.
A second front in the Global War on Terror is to stop the spread of the world's deadliest weapons. And this President has had concrete success in stopping the spread of these deadly weapons. The President's policy on WMDs is very clear; regimes can pursue WMDs at great peril and at great cost. Or regimes can give up their WMDs and embark on a path to better relations with the international community. Some have listened; Colonel Gadhafi chose wisely and gave up his weapons. And because of the President's plain spoken and resolute leadership in combating WMDs, sensitive nuclear plans and thousand of pieces of dangerous equipment from Libya are now locked away safely in the United States of America.
The President has mobilized the world in this fight. The United States led the effort to pass UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which requires states to enact national legislation to criminalize proliferation activities… to enact and implement effective export controls… and to secure sensitive materials. He outlined further steps to strengthen nuclear non-proliferation on February 11, 2004, at the National Defense University.
And we are taking action to stop the trade in such weapons. Under the Proliferation Security Initiative, one of President Bush's signature programs, more than 60 nations are sharing information and using their sovereign authorities to search ships, trains, planes, and trucks carrying suspect cargo and, where necessary, seize dangerous materials. Last year, working with our British, German and Italian allies, we seized a large shipment of centrifuge parts bound for Libya just in time to help convince Libya's leader to take a new course.
Less than a year ago, a network headed by the Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear plans and equipment to countries like Libya, Iran and North Korea. Working closely with other governments, we painstakingly pieced together the nature and extent of Khan's network, whose operatives spanned three continents. Today, this dangerous source for deadly weapons is no longer in business. A. Q. Khan has confessed his crimes. His top deputy is in jail. Another key operative was arrested in South Africa just last month. America, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and other nations are continuing to pursue members of the network to ensure that it never operates again and to deter others from thinking that the way to get rich is to sell weapons that threaten the peace of the world.
And it was the United States that blew the whistle on Iran and North Korea and their dangerous efforts to deceive the international community.
Now the world through the IAEA is focused on Iran, and five nations (China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and the United States) have delivered a clear and unified message to North Korea: your nuclear weapons programs must be eliminated.
But all these victories - against Al Qaeda, the A.Q. Khans of the world and Libya are only battles in the Global War on Terror. To achieve permanent victory, we must do more - we must affirm the truth that when freedom is on the march, America is more secure - and when freedom is in retreat, America is more vulnerable. This is why the President has broken with 60 years of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East, in the hope of purchasing stability at the price of liberty. The stakes could not be higher. As long as the broader Middle East remains a region of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce men and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends.
Already our commitment to freedom is helping to spur a great debate throughout the broader Middle East. From Morocco to Jordan to Qatar, we are seeing elections and new protections for women, and the beginnings of political pluralism. Political, civil society and business leaders have issued stirring calls for political, economic and social change. And in Afghanistan last week we witnessed extraordinary testimony to the power of the vote. A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan reported with awe what he witnessed in the Afghan elections. This soldier talked about the Afghans that began lining up hours before sunrise in the falling snow to vote. He talked about lines of patient Afghans, some of them amputees, waiting to vote in lines that reached, in one case, 2.5 kilometers long. And he talked about former Taliban elements who came into one Afghan town to try to intimidate the local citizens into not voting, but were met by the village population and refused entry into the village.
To those that have seen only chaos to those who said that Afghanistan was a failure to those who did not believe that freedom could change peoples' lives or that America would have to impose freedom, the Afghan people have delivered a crushing rebuke the Taliban could not stop the advance of freedom, votes have been cast and the elections were a success. Challenges lie ahead, but Afghanistan has shown what is possible when democracy becomes an alternative to terror, repression and fear.
When Iraqis go to the polls next year to elect a government and put behind them their brutal history democracy's power will be affirmed again. That opportunity exists today because America and a Coalition acted to remove one of the most brutal and dangerous regimes in the Middle East.
Saddam was the only tyrant of our time not only to possess weapons of mass destruction… but also to use them in acts of mass murder. He manufactured chemical and biological weapons, and then refused to account for those weapons. He systematically deceived UN weapons inspectors and was in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
We all expected to find WMDs. Intelligence services around the world expected to find WMDs. What we did find is Saddam had a strategy, which demonstrated that we were never going to be able to break the link between Saddam Hussein and WMDs. The only way to put an end to his ambitions buttressed by wealth, knowledge and capability was to change the regime; a reality recognized by the U.S. Congress in 1998. As the Duelfer report records, Saddam was waiting for sanctions to end so that he could restart his weapons programs without hindrance. Through front companies and by cheating the United Nations Oil for Food Program, Saddam was evading and eroding the sanctions, raising illegal revenues, and spending some of that money on illegal dual-use materials and goods. And he was not just waiting for sanctions to end; he was working to end them. He gave targeted incentives to nations, companies, and individuals, incentives that were designed to give an economic stake in the regime's success. The Duelfer report shows, sooner rather than later, Saddam was going to be in a position once again to pursue his goal of a WMD-armed Iraq dominating the Middle East, and menacing the United States and our allies.
Saddam's brutal outlaw regime was a unique threat to America, to the Middle East, and to the world. He tortured his own people, invaded his neighbors, and shot at our pilots patrolling the no fly zones. The threat from Saddam had been festering for a dozen years, with no solution in sight. And after September 11th, it was a threat that appeared in a fundamentally different light.
The possibility of an outlaw state passing weapons of mass destruction to a terrorist network is the greatest danger of our time. Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists and maintained ties to terrorists. He was an avowed enemy of America, and an avowed enemy of our allies. After 9/11, no president could have sat still in the face of such a threat and done nothing. So long as Saddam remained in power, menacing his people and menacing the world from the heart of the world's most volatile region, he remained a key enemy of hope and progress in the broader Middle East.
The period since the liberation of Iraq has been difficult. But, an interim Iraqi government is now preparing for transitional elections next January - the first free and fair nationwide elections in that country's history. Iraqi security forces will number 125,000 by the end of the year, as Iraqis take more responsibility for their own security. The Iraqis are bravely and defiantly meeting the challenges that confront them.
Next year, an elected transitional assembly will draft a new constitution with a bill of rights that provides the framework for a permanent government. Under that constitution, the people of Iraq will go to the polls again in December of 2005, to elect a permanent government. There will be 145,000 security forces by February and 200,000 by the time of their permanent elections. At that point, Iraqis will have achieved for themselves what people all over the world have sought for centuries: a decent government that protects their rights, and allows them to fulfill their aspirations in freedom and peace.
Through suicide bombings, beheadings, and other horrific acts, terrorists and Saddam hold-outs are trying to ensure that the Iraqi people never achieve this goal. There will be more violence in the coming weeks. These killers know that a free Iraq will be free of them and free of their cruelty and ideology of murder. They know that the success of democracy in Iraq will be a mortal blow to their ambition to impose Taliban-like rule over the entire Middle East. Iraq is a central front in the war on terror, and there they must be defeated.
And they will be defeated. Their tactics grab headlines with their brutality and daily toll in blood and treasure. But their strategy will not work. They seek to intimidate Iraqi leaders through assassination and other forms of violence, but those leaders refuse to be intimidated. They seek to demoralize Iraq's security forces, and discourage new recruits, but every day more brave Iraqis have come forward to volunteer to serve their country. They seek to sow sectarian violence but Shiite, Kurd, Sunni, and other minorities continue to build toward a unified Iraq. The future the Iraqi people seek, the government they deserve, will be achieved in spite of the violence in Iraq.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the hard work of replacing tyranny with liberty is underway. It is turbulent but far preferable to the false stability that characterized the world in the days before the twin towers fell.
As we stand here today, American men and women in uniform are in peril as they defend the front lines of freedom. Sadly, many have made the ultimate sacrifice and others have suffered crippling wounds. But, nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice. And their legacy will be a world where not just terrorist organizations are defeated, but the ideology of hatred that spawned them is defeated as well. That will mean a permanent peace and enduring security for our children and grandchildren.
I began today by saying that there is a great debate in our country about what the Global War on Terror calls us to do. Ladies and Gentleman, this is not a limited engagement; this is the struggle of our times. We are not the first generation to face a defining struggle or to be called to defend freedom.
The last time that I was in government in Washington was 1989 to 1991. I was lucky. I was the Soviet specialist in the White House at the end of the Cold War. I got to participate in the liberation of Eastern Europe. I got to participate in the unification of Germany and to see the Soviet Union collapse. It was a heady time for all of us. But, when you look back, you realize that we were really only just harvesting the good decisions that had been taken in 1946, in 1947, in 1948, when Truman, Acheson, Kennan, and others recognized that we were not in a limited engagement with communism, we were in a struggle of our times. And how the world must have looked very tough in those days, because in 1946, the communists in Italy and in France did exceptionally well in the elections, in the 40-percent category in both countries.
In 1946, Germans were still starving, and people said that the reconstruction of Germany had failed. In 1947, as civil war increased, there was a civil war in Turkey. In 1948, Germany was permanently divided by the Berlin Crisis, and Czechoslovakia fell to the communist coup. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule, and the Chinese communists won their civil war.
Those weren't just tactical setbacks. And yet, the people of the United States and their leadership understood, against all setbacks, there was no reason for retreat, that it called us to come - to dig deep within ourselves, to believe in the power of liberty and the power of freedom and the power of democracy, to stand fast against the Soviet military threat, to mobilize all elements of our national power and because they did, 15 years later, when President Bush sits across the table from Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, or from Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan, he sits across not just from a friend and ally, but a democratic friend and ally.
Europe and Asia are safer as a result, and so it shall be in the Middle East.
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