Wednesday, February 19, 2003

New Homeland Security Website "Terrorism Forces Us to Make a Choice, Don't Be Afraid, Be Ready." This is the introduction to the new website launched today by the Homeland Security Department, called Ready.gov. The site provides information in three main areas: Make a Kit of Emergency Supplies, Make a Plan, and Be Informed, which covers how to respond to threats from biological, chemical, explosions, nuclear blast and radiation. Ok, are you scared yet! [beSpacific] The government is making lots of websites these days... I wonder when the first elected official will start a weblog. 6:00:17 PM

Time - Coming Ashore Charles Krauthammer had an interesting piece in Time magazine a week or so ago, about how the U.S. must fully engage the Arab and African worlds if it is going to reduce the threats within it. Neglect, it turned out, had a price, a terrible price. After World War II, America pressed for democratic reform in Germany and Japan and throughout Western Europe and Asia. It succeeded. Democracy put down roots. Yet two regions remained exempt from this democratizing impulse: Africa, because of its chaos and lack of strategic assets; and the Middle East, because of its oil and apparent benignity. This neglect, in part, led us to the awful events of 9-11. Are we up to the challenge? Hence the awful realization: preventing the next Sept. 11 will require America to engage the Arab world the way it engaged Europe and Asia a half-century ago. Totally. We have long recoiled from such an undertaking. For decades, we tried a far more modest approach to the Arab world. It had three parts: • Pacification: buying off and subsidizing corrupt governments. • Policing: dealing with terrorism as a form of crime, not war. • Patrolling: maintaining a balance of power in the region principally through an offshore naval presence. After Sept. 11, the old offshore, hands-off, see-no-evil policy will not suffice. We now understand the cost of that abdication. It leaves a critical part of the world insulated and isolated — and incubating terrible enemies and terrible weapons. I want peace as much as anyone else, especially now that I'm a father. i don't want my child(ren) to grow up in a world of constant threats from enslavement or annihilation. But pacifism isn't the answer. We must act to spread the seeds of freedom and democracy. My hope is that grassroots-efforts will catalyze change from within before top-down forces are exerted. 1:50:02 PM