National Security Going Forward

To The Editor:
We have accomplished much since Sept. 11, 2001 and operations are in place, which not only have kept us safe from further attacks of intricate conspiracy like Sept. 11, but make them unlikely. Indeed if we had in place then what we have now, Sept. 11 would not have occurred. It was a preventable event but we were not prepared then to prevent it.
That said, the Islamic extremists are far from done with us. As Catherine Herridge points out in her new book “The Next Wave,” the strategies and tactics of the terrorists are shifting toward an emphasis on recruiting and radicalizing Muslims living in the U.S., especially citizens. While Bin Laden is gone al Qaeda still holds forth in Pakistan, though diminished. But our untiring vigilance will help with such cases going forward. With the Christmas-Day underwear bomber and the Times Square car bomber we were lucky. Their devices failed. Our country and global interests will continue to be targets. Terrorists dream of getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction (other than jet liners.) They covet chemical, biological or nuclear devices, capable of massive death, which can be effectively deployed and activated by a single person or operative pair.
As we move forward, hopefully in safety, we must not live in fear and get on with our lives. We have other threats to our way of life and national security, which need our confident and focused attention, not the least of these is energy independence. We should be aggressively exploiting every domestic source we can, becoming independent first, addressing the environmental warts as we go. We should shift more of our imports (which we need now) from unfriendly sources to Canadian and other friendly ones. Realistically fossil fuels will be with us for some time. Nuclear is also key. Further, nations with the lowest-cost energy have a global advantage in the marketplace.
Greater use of domestic sources will help us. We are so vulnerable with our dependency on non-North American foreign sources. The administration’s love affair with “green” energy (wind and solar) is misplaced, for these are at best supplemental sources and cannot provide the bulk on-demand energy this nation needs to survive and prosper. Fossil and nuclear sources can. We are wasting time and resources (recall the half billion-dollar loan to bankrupt Solyndra.) We need energy independence, which we won’t get from “green” alone. Besides, President Obama is mostly trying to shore up his link to his environmental constituency and the jobs problem. “Green” for him, as with many other issues is mostly political.
If we launched a “full-court press” on domestic sources today, we’d be decades getting close to energy independence. Thus we must get started now. While this issue doesn’t involve blowing up buildings, car bombs or mass murder it is nonetheless an existential threat to life as we have come to know it in America. As a national security issue, it may be second only to the war against extremist Islamic terror. Just imagine if some Middle East conflagration resulted in cutting off a large chunk of our imported oil. We are in no shape to make a fast recovery from such an event. Time’s a wasting. Availability, not just price, would be the main issue.
The clock is ticking. Currently only 51 percent of our energy comes from domestic sources. Competitive global demand for oil is mounting, affecting both price and availability. We have the unexploited resources to reduce our foreign dependency. Let’s use them!
BOB LOVELL
Court House