 Michael can bring us out share it this room What do you sign on? What I want that Bob start you're leaving earlier and that way you're you're done first and He's got to be out of here five and not that So that doesn't really matter. Yeah, I do the international first, you know, I can I'll go first you go second Whatever Yes One of the things people are going to do is well my neighborhood is doing Saturday We're going to use our we live near the stating and we do parking football parking. We charge it like 20 bucks. So we're gonna Price-fix and donate it all to We've got a full room and I'm going to violate Michigan procedure Which is usually not to start until 10 minutes after the hour, but we certainly got plenty of people here And I think we should probably get going I'm Rebecca blank. I'm the dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and I appreciate all of your coming this afternoon I suspect all of us have been spent much of this last week sort of trying to cope with both the sense of personal loss as Well as these pictures that keep you're playing in our minds from the horrible events that happened last Tuesday one of the ways in which of course academics cope with those sorts of events and try to absorb them is to try to Explain them and understand them and fit them into patterns That we hope will help us find some ways to prevent them from happening again And that is what this panel is about. It's called responding to terrorism We've got four experts here to focused on the international side and to focused on the domestic side To talk about how can we respond and how can we prevent this from happening again? The one thing I would like to say before we start is that this is a topic that we are all still very Emotionally involved in and there's going to be a lot of disagreement in this room. They're probably going to be a disagreement amongst the panelists I know they'll be disagreement within the audience and I simply ask that all of us respect each other's opinions and Allow everyone to communicate where they are and what their questions are The plan is to have each panelist talk for no more than 10 minutes And I will try very hard to keep them to that And then to open it up for questions and answers back and forth from the audience So that's where we're going. Let me introduce our four panelists here at the beginning and I'll just let them do this in in the appropriate order The first speaker here is going to be professor Bob Axelrod who's over on the end here Bob is the Arthur Bromage Distinguished University professor. He works on international security issues and complex decision making He's jointly appointed in both the Ford School and the political science department The next speaker is going to become Lieberthal in the middle Ken is in the political science department and in the School of Business He is a professor of political science and at the Center for Chinese Studies Most notably for much of the last three years He has served in the White House and the Clinton administration as a national security advisor primarily on Asian related issues and Chinese related issues Following him will be Rick Hall to my immediate left Rick is a professor in the Ford School and in the public and in the political science program Rick's expertise is working with congressional decision-making and we'll talk about how Congress You know will and should respond to this he Has written a number of books about congressional decision-making one of which won the Fennel Prize from the American Political Science Association and our last speaker is David Thatcher Who's there between Bob and Ken? David is in the Ford School of Public Policy and in the urban planning program in the Taubman School and David works on policing issues and on profiling issues and is going to talk about how we within this country Try to go about dealing with terrorism and policing an effective way that avoid some of the worst types of profiling That I suspect many of us want to avoid So that's the the the plan for today, and I think I'll just let Bob start and go from there Thank You Becky I'm gonna talk about two things one is what the United States government can do and the second is what we in Ann Arbor can do The first thing is The American response is being called a war And I think it's better to think of this more like a war on drugs or the war on poverty or the war on cancer Then say the war on Japan in World War two That it's going to be a long struggle without Without necessarily having the military part the dominant part and the unfortunate part about the imagery of war is that we tend To think of it as military only or military primarily It seems to me the key in judging success Is whether? Terrorists and their supporters are recruited faster Then they're eliminated If the United States does something that kills five terrorists But causes five thousand people in the Muslim world to hate the United States and sign up That's not a big gain. That's a big loss and what that means is that we have to be very sensitive to Muslim Concerns and perspectives an example would be take the word crusade Used by some American leaders. This is just the absolute perfectly wrong thing to do because to a Muslim crusade means Invasion by infidels. So if we call it a crusade, it's the only thing they'll agree with us that that it is a crusade but to them That's the worst possible way of thinking about it. So the second aspect of The recruitment issue is Pakistan and the hard thing for the administration is not to ask Pakistan for more than the regime can manage as you know, it's a regime that has substantial support for the Taliban and yet has agreed to cooperate with the United States and if the Government falls because it has become too much aligned with the United States. That would be a disaster The third thing is the United States has to justify to the extent it can Whatever military acts it Performs This is really very hard to do The United States can claim as they have that been laden as the key Although he's not the only element, but it's hard to prove that Whatever evidence we have might not be convincing to somebody else and much of the best evidence would reveal sources and methods that would Harm the further struggle against terrorism. So The justification of military acts is really very hard to do, but it's worth making some sacrifices in future capabilities I think in order to be able to do that and of course Justification military acts is easier to the extent that the acts are really restrained and don't seem to be just indiscriminate The second major issue is police intelligence work, which clearly is critical here United States has the capability of doing anything if it could figure out what to do And we can level any village in the world, but which village is it can level any cave But which cave is it? That's a police and intelligence kind of issue and Dave Thatcher is going to be addressing that primarily But let me mention two aspects of it In particular one is the possibility of tracking down money leads as well as human leads And if we could do that we could we could really thwart a lot of ability to undertake major activities Secondly, we have to rely on our friends. For example, Pakistan has a good deal of intelligence about Afghanistan We have to rely on that and Israel presumably has other intelligence about other terrorists and so on and so we can't just do this alone So far it's been a complete failure of intelligence Clearly the idea that there was no advanced warning of something that involved such a tremendous level of sophistication and coordination and planning and training and 19 people willing to commit suicide. We didn't have any inkling of that. That's a clear failure. And so we've got to obviously Do a hell of a lot better We have to be aware of mission creep The idea that for example A small group goes into Afghanistan captures one base Then they're under fire. So then more people go to rescue them and then more people go to rescue them And before you know it you occupy the whole country If that happens the united states could easily be in the kind of situation that israel is in in the west bank Which would be absolutely horrible and Therefore a real challenge is to be able to not let the Level of military activity constantly increase even if there's not very much success from the small smaller level Another thing is refugees the newspapers don't talk about this television doesn't talk about it much But there are already two and a half million afghanistani refugees in iran and pakistan And about a million a million internally displaced Refugees within afghanistan That's before last week Now there's a lot more Those people are in serious trouble Not only that But afghanistan has had a drought for the last three years and the united nations Has just said that while they're evacuating their facilities to distribute food By november five million afghanis will be dependent on food distribution But there won't be outsiders to do that to bring that food in distribute it We have to remember that the uh, palestinian refugee camps They were quasi permanent after 1948 with the breeding grounds of much of the terrorism for good reason And we don't want to have all that happen again So we do need to pay attention to refugees they're plight both from humanitarian point of view and from a political point of view The fourth thing is um, the israeli palestinian conflict Unless that is Resolved terrorism will never end So we need to pay attention to that. Well, what can we in an arbor do? One thing is to reach out To arab americans and muslims and say That we understand that they're not the problem And if other americans have discriminated against them or displayed prejudice We at least as individuals Abhor that and they do have some friends Second of course is raise money For relief third of is preach patients The administration will be in a tremendous pressure to show progress results bomb them something And to the extent that they're pressured by the public or political leaders They're in a very difficult position. And so preaching patients is helpful. We also have to be watch our civil liberties There's going to be a rush to judgment about The number of things that could be done to make investigation easier And some of those are appropriate and some of those we're going to regret 10 years from now And we need to keep a close eye on that And finally stay informed You'll soon learn i suspect the difference between to jikistan and turkmenistan And the difference between shiaid and suni, which you may already know these things will become important. I suspect So keep informed and if necessary organize college campuses have often been A central focus of political organization and it may come to be appropriate again That's nothing. Thank you. Thank you, bob kenley berthall Thank you. It's uh Not surprising that bob and i share many similar conclusions And i want to put a kind of way of getting there in a slightly different framework But what i have to say is just highly compatible with to my mind the very wise words that you just heard from bob I think i've tried to think of this a little bit from a kind of You know if you're participating in foreign policy decision making in the white house How should you think about this issue and then what should you do? What are the key imperatives to follow up? And it seems to me that uh one way to figure out what to do is to figure out what the terrorists are trying to accomplish And then organize your reaction to foil their top goals You have to start off with the recognition that they had been unbelievably successful in what they've done to this point I mean we have 19 people who committed suicide and probably a network of uh Somewhere under a few hundred people supporting them all civilian Uh, and they've done more damage to our country than any army could have done Uh and probably to the global financial system uh and to politics and many other countries at the same time I mean this is absolutely this is what you call uh asymmetrical warfare taken to its highest level Uh, but what they did initially was tactical What their strategic goals are it seems to me are two One is to uh have the united states people of the united states and the government of the united states Emerge from this Terrible week that we've had Uh feeling insecure and demoralized basically becoming paralyzed or losing our ability to adopt a sustained Tough smart set of policies to deal with the issue in front of us Uh, how do you demoralize the people of the united states after this terrible event? You wait until the shock is over people begin to recover and then you hit them again Unlikely to hit them again with an airplane attack because security is so tight the chances of success are small So instead you release anthrax into the new york city Subway ventilation system Can kill a million people and we'll never find out who did it Uh, or engage in cyber warfare to shut down public utilities across the united states within a 30 minute period Uh, or other things like that all of which are quite feasible to do Uh, and so uh one thing that we have to be concerned about Is what's the next step and you see some of our government officials talking about that concern now But the problem is the dangers are really they could come from anywhere Second thing terrorists are trying to do is to create the conditions to drive us out of the middle east Uh, and so that in a peculiar fashion what all of us In our heart of hearts, I suspect would like to see which is some dramatic military response That would teach them a lesson or would somehow rather get back at them All of that is precisely what Osama bin Laden wants to see too Because that is a response that would uh on the one hand highlight american military superiority And on the other hand highlight american callousness Concerning innocent muslim lives and by the way the one group you would not kill would be the terrorists involved Because they're smart enough to get out of the way and their intelligence would tell them we were coming So that a kind of spasm military response is both what they seek And clearly what we should avoid Let me add though even with reasonably smart responses If we do not handle things carefully we are putting at risk Uh what is What must be considered uh quite unstable situations in pakistan Which will have dramatic consequences if the pakistani government falls apart. I believe also in saudi arabia Which does not stand on strong feet to my mind and a lot of this tracks back to there in various ways If we were to undertake major military action, you would have problems in more Uh in tougher muslim communities well into southeast asia into indonesia president uh bush's meeting with uh The head of indonesia megawadi uh today And that is a government that we are trying to stabilize and and support We could do nothing worse uh than to create greater problems among the muslim population in indonesia Which is the largest muslim population in any country in the world today um If you were to in worst case end up with uh pakistan devolving into civil war and saudi arabia highly unstable We can have as we try to emerge from our current economic slump a global energy crisis At the same time that we got a land war in asia that is drawing us in in central asia that's drawing us in That is not something that we want to get involved in and clearly other partners that we would need in the effort Would pull back if they see american clumsiness in this kind of response So as bob was suggesting, uh the implications for the bush administration are That they have a very difficult task ahead of them Uh, there are no easy answers. There's no conventional wisdom that suffices But I think there are building blocks of a Sensible response and it's worth kind of sketching those out and here again My overlap with bob will be considerable, but let me kind of reinforce some of his messages One is it seems to me that the administration has to take the lead in turning american anger into american resolve Not into american frustration and american passion Because the answer here is going to be a long-term effort Gradually to shift the balance in directions that make us more secure and terrorists less able to function That is not dramatic high-profile stuff So you really have to educate the populace that this is a long-term low visibility High-cost difficult effort and it's the only way to go Uh, and so you know kind of the rhetoric bob picked out use of the term crusade I agree with that very much, but also this rhetoric and you know, we're going to smoke them out And we're going to chase them down and you know, this thing you know, it doesn't doesn't fit the bill Uh, and it also does not reassure The leaders of the of the many other countries who will have to cooperate with us if we're going to do an effective job So I think that the white house still has to go a little farther and finding its its political footing So that it can uh sustain long-term support Secondly, we're going to have to tighten domestic security against follow-on attacks And here i'm not talking about the long rung i'm talking about today Uh, and for the coming weeks when the possibility of that is quite substantial And uh, hopefully we will be successful I personally think it's quite likely that there will be efforts made on the other side to try to do something very dramatic And the question is whether we can find it and cut it off fast enough Uh, thirdly, uh, as bob indicated, we have to develop necessary intelligence on the terrorist structures resources and methods That is long term That requires cooperation not only from pakistan and saudi arabia, but from russia and china As we go after the financial networks, uh from switzerland from israel, which happens to be a center of money laundering in the world Uh, and from many other places, uh, where we coordinate information on a real-time basis Uh and have countries do things that are very uncomfortable given their domestic laws In order to provide the information necessary to cut off the financial flows that allow all of this to take place Uh, we have to infiltrate terrorist networks, which means that you have to recruit terrorists And when you find them you don't kill them you pay them Uh, and you pay them so that you can get inside and gradually develop the information you need because these things are set up in a cellular fashion Where any given cell doesn't know about very much that's going on elsewhere So it's very painstaking. You have to track this bit by bit and then use force only when it can be the most damaging results you can possibly achieve from a limited use of force and that's when you call in the People who can use that kind of force We will have to with most of our use of force use special operations teams Uh, these are the kinds of teams for example that you drop into afghanistan and they live there for weeks or months at a time Blend into the population work the local markets Develop the agents and eventually direct Helicopters or other means that you know other platforms for high explosives To very very particular targets We'll have to finally build and sustain a diplomatic coalition for the long haul so that we can squeeze very hard those who must be squeezed And also obtain the political and other help that will require from most of the other governments in the world This to my mind requires going far beyond the usual list of friends and allies I mean for obvious reasons our usual list of friends and allies doesn't happen to include the people who are closest to politically and otherwise the folks we're going after And it will require very importantly being sensitive to the needs of the governments whose cooperation We are seeking to elicit We will not do very well if we sit there and simply demand a list of things that we need from each government Most of the things that we will need are things that are difficult for other governments to deliver They pose enormous domestic problems for those governments Uh, and those governments will want things in return. I'm not talking about payments of cash I'm talking about policy adjustments in the united states That help them deal with their problems, whether we like it or not In other words a kind of style of unilateralism of saying this is what's good for the united states What's good for the united states is good for everyone and therefore we expect you to do the following Is going to produce enormous frustration and failure Uh, and will make the terrorist act of september 11 even more successful than it's been to date So to sum up these developments are a security nightmare It's a security nightmare that has enormous consequences, not only for the us but for many others around the world We can take serious measures to limit the damage and to try to gain the upper hand over time But I think that will require a set of priorities and approaches that frankly will require that this administration Learn to do things very differently from the way it conducted itself from january 20 to september 11 in the international arena Uh, and let me say I say that not sarcastically I and I everyone else has to wish the president and his team extremely well because all of our futures depend on their doing this work Well, uh, and we have to recognize how difficult a task they face Uh, and we'll have to watch it carefully as it unfolds. Uh, you know, what I've done here I think what bob was trying to do is to try to simply give you a kind of broad set of building blocks Recognizing that fiascas will concretely watch the president do tomorrow. We will have Uh, a lot of discomfort, but we can come up with some ideas. We may or may not agree on them But uh, I think we do agree on what the broad building blocks of an appropriate response are and are not And I hope that gives you a some basis for evaluating the way things unfold from here on out. Thank you Thank you, ken Rick hall, um rick given we've got a number of people out in the hall You might want to stand up or make sure you speak loudly so folks out there can hear you Yeah, there are three things I'd like to uh, talk about In the few minutes allowed to me. Um, one I'd like to Describe the response, uh, the congressional response to the terrorist acts of last week When jude haves who organized this conference called me, um late last week and asked me to serve on this panel And and comment on the congressional response, um to the terrorist attacks I said sure, uh, that ought to be easy. I can sum it up in a few words Whatever the president wants rubber stamp it Well, I want to talk a little bit about how true I think that is Uh in capturing what the congressional response has been Um, I also want to note that uh, that isn't so far as what the president has wanted to do Uh in terms of foreign policy, I also want to talk about more recent developments that involve Uh legislation and other actions that uh focus more on domestic affairs and that congress has been Um more active is starting to become more active So I'll describe the response both in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy Uh, and then I'll try to say a few words about why I believe congress has responded the way that it has If I have time then, um, which I doubt, um I'll try to offer some remarks about what I think the congressional response ought to be Um in the coming uh weeks, um those remarks will echo I think the remarks of both, uh, bob and ken Okay, so what's the what's the congressional response been? Well, it's been at least all last week It struck me that it was essentially to um rally round behind the president to effectively say Very little other than that. We um want to act with unity with resolve and um the Policymaker in this context is the president and we all ought to stand behind him now historically. In fact, there is um long precedent A long list of precedents for congress doing just that especially especially when War hysteria is the emotion of the moment In fact, uh In foreign policy crises or emergencies congress has rarely taken the initiative Uh, the founders had in fact anticipated just that Uh, uh in writing the constitution, uh, madison, hamilton and jay and the federalist papers talk about that in some detail Saying how congress simply um organizationally doesn't have the capacity to act with um The unity the speed the surprise element of surprise. It's necessary in conducting foreign policy But if congress has seldom taken the initiative, it's it's often in american history played the role of the critic the obstructionist perhaps the modifier of uh policies that have been developed and And pushed by the white house Um indeed presidential war powers have been a perennial theme in The relationship between these two branches. Um, and at times congress has officially tried To uh assert itself. It did so for instance in the war powers resolution Of 1973 which by the way dealt with any executive commitment of troops combat troops not simply Kind of a full war mobilization Full blown war mobilization That resolution required among other things Uh advanced notice of military actions advanced notice to congress of intended military actions by the president Explicit time limits on the use of combat troops uh without And the requirement that the president withdraw troops without Uh unless the president sought and received explicit congressional consent But in so far as I can tell and others can fill in here. Um As well as I I mean you've been reading uh the record just as I have Um this critical posture that congress sometimes adopts Uh has been altogether absent up until this point. Um, in fact last night at the Um Conference that was uh put on by president bolinger, you know, I was one of the first times I really heard some Some careful critical thinking about um what the The policy the united states policy in this Uh and reaction this crisis has been It's not come out of congress. Um In fact in so far as I can tell the war powers act is A dead document and so far as this situation is concerned it may have been already dead Uh in fact you may remember that when the elder bush went um Was making preparations uh for the counter invasion of kuwait There was a more vigorous debate in congress about whether or not That should in fact occur that in fact The president would would uh was was really uh constitutionally able to take such action whether congress would approve it Um, but as you may also remember uh president Bush said that he was going to go ahead with it anyway No matter what congress said in fact, we really never saw the showdown because Uh in fact congress did approve it Now last week then congress was uh Conspicuously conspicuously absent From most of the media coverage. It was kind of hard to find anybody Uh on capitol hill talking about what the response ought to be occasionally you'd see Some legislator um Some congressional leader or well placed committee member Might they might get enough airtime to Uh echo the president's moral outrage To condemn uh the terrorists uh to play to the militaristic audience back home perhaps with an eye to Uh picking up a few more votes or supporters Um and to generally you know provide us with uh repetitions of these odes to unity and freedom On the one hand and this uh as ken mentioned off with their heads Retribution on the other Uh in fact if you haven't read it I would recommend Uh that you uh search out uh senator carl levin's floor statement from last week Um, I have to say I was a bit surprised by it. It was very much this sort of um awkish patriotism And we're behind you all the way Mr president Now collectively congress did take action last week and i'm not going to go Uh into a great deal of detail about what they did they passed A resolution authorizing military action And the language they used Was this that In fact, let me give it to you exactly Um Resolved that the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations organizations Or persons he determines planned Authorized committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on september 11 2001 Or Harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the united states By such nations organizations or persons Now for those of you who are as old as I am or older That ought to create a bit of sort of evoke a kind of lingering nausea From about um 30 years back A similar resolution past uh congress hj resolution 1145 on august 7th 1964 Resolved by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of america in congress assembled That the congress approves and supports the determination of the president As commander in chief to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United states and to prevent further aggression Now of course that came to be known as the gulf of talk at resolution Uh, it was used by presidents johnson and nixon to escalate the vietnam war for seven more years Even as congressional and public support for the war waned It was a resolution that many legislators came and most of the public came to regret um so uh at this point um The congress has responded with a grant of of authority um to uh President bush and i would add also An authorization for 40 billion dollars in funds, which was more than even Even president bush had originally hoped for Uh for bush to carry out whatever activities that he uh deems necessary and appropriate um Now let me say a little bit about why i think that The legislators the congress assembled acted in a way that they did um And it really goes to i think one of the two central motivations Of most politicians Which are these um you claim credit for you do what you can to claim credit for good policies And you do what you can to avoid harm for bad policies uh Now skin has already remarked the uh This is our our options here the good policy options are extremely limited The bush administration is in a very difficult position It may be in one in which is going to create many more problems than it solves And so i think it's not simply this uh Impulsive patriotism That in fact there is um A fair amount of Feeling certainly within the democratic party Uh that they don't want to take responsibility for they don't want to be held accountable for whatever policies are to come um in fact I'd take you back to Uh the first drafts Of the resolutions which i the final draft of which i just read from They were passed in both the house and the senate The first one said If i can find it That resolved that the senate and house of representatives Commit to support increased resources in the war to eradicate eradicate terrorism And then the eighth provision support the determination of the president in close consultation with the congress To bring justice and punish the perpetrators of these attacks as well as their sponsors That resolution actually passed in the senate a very similarly worded resolution passed in the house Got very little attention. It wasn't until saturday then That that the that uh negotiated resolution The one really supported by the white house passed and had that sweeping language then that i just read from In fact senator dashel's office was Uh working hard at first to include language that was more restrictive And ultimately gave in in part because of That the members of the Democratic members of both the house and the senate Saw that they really wanted to avoid Harm for potentially bad policies Rather than put themselves in a position to play a greater role, but also take the blame for bad policies I'll stop there and and talk a little bit about their domestic response if people are interested In the question and answer period Thank you rick david thatcher Uh in Response to last week's attacks one of the ways in which you and i are going to be most directly affected Is through our experiences at the airport with security and i want to talk today About one aspect of the airport security issue The use of ethnic profiling as a security device that we've heard about and why we should oppose it Partly because the hijackers last week were apparently from the middle east We're especially talking here about profiling arab americans as possible terrorists as well as people from other ethnic groups who are often Confused with arab americans I'm talking about uh the practice of singling these groups out for heightened scrutiny as a routine practice for airport security And also about the use of security practices that have a disparate impact on arab americans And it's important to say at the outset that heightened scrutiny like this is Much more than a simple inconvenience. I'm not going to tell you stories today about What people go through in these interrogations and searches at the airports to convince you of that I can only ask you to talk with Arab americans who have flown this week about their experiences with customs and airport security and law enforcement And to imagine how much worse those experiences would get if we embrace more fully An explicit practice of ethnic profiling these interrogations can be intrusive. They can be humiliating They can regularly mean that you will miss your flight They can mean you have to show up at the airport hours before your fellow passengers who are white show up at the airport and a few In order to prepare for the worst and in a few cases they've even led to unjust Detainment and arrest When these experiences are repeated again and again and that's exactly what would happen under a under an explicit system of ethnic profiling Arab americans would Their decisions about uh, whether to fly at all and what at what threshold to fly at all Would would clearly be affected. So we're talking about a significant burden That arab americans could be asked to pay and in some ways are already being asked to pay In the fight against terrorism A lot of the arguments i've been hearing over the past week Um about these issues are pragmatic arguments. A lot of people seem to resist profiling on the grounds that it's ineffective What profile some people have asked would have caught the seminary student Who was returning to his studies from a visit with his mother and was detained by airport security with hand grenades What profile would catch the single woman who was tricked into smuggling a bomb on a plane by her boyfriend And much more important than these anecdotes. I think there's a General possibility that many people argue that if we rely on profiling as a way of coping with security Security practice is a way of deciding whom to scrutinize the terrorists will simply evade the profiles They'll hire people who don't fit the profiles to plant the bombs and to the extent possible They'll change their own appearance and their and falsify their names and backgrounds There's a lot to these sorts of pragmatic objections against Ethnic profiling but i don't want to say any more about them today because to me they don't get To the heart of the reasons why we should object to ethnic profiling and its relatives these arguments suggest that if it turned out that ethnic profiling were rational Uh in this narrow sense if it turned out that terrorists were more concentrated in one ethnic group than another That we should support it and i don't accept that again I think that even if it turned out the profiling were rational in that narrow sense That we should reject it for moral reasons for reasons that have to do With the rule of law in a democracy And for reasons that have to do with racial and ethnic relations in this country And i want to spell these reasons out today because i don't think they've been coming through clearly In the media discussions that i've heard over the past week even among the majority of commentators who oppose this practice For a lot of us our opposition to um the moral case the more our moral opposition to racial and ethnic profiling is simply a matter of Intuition is simply intuitive to a lot of us that the benefits and the burdens of public policy ought to be shared equally Unless there's some unavoidable reason Otherwise and ethnic profiling is in a way the paradigm case of a policy that distributes its its burdens Very unequally to adapt a nice metaphor that randall kennedy introduced on a slightly a very similar subject It's it's equivalent to levying a special tax on arab americans To support public safety although everyone supposedly benefits from safer safer air travel We're asking one group in particular to pay this tax exclusively So apart from our basic intuitions that that's unacceptable Why do we object to that and why do people who don't share that basic intuition? Why should they accept that i want to offer two reasons here And the first reason is that policies like this aren't consistent with democratic decision making when You tell some people what i just said when you tell them that airport profiling Amounts to a special kind of tax on arab americans to support public safety They respond that although that's regrettable it's unavoidable since the rest of us simply aren't in a position to pay that tax Effectively and again, I don't want to say any more than I already have about the rationality of profiling that many people of good will Suggest that we shouldn't blind ourselves to unpleasant facts about the ethnic background of many of the terrorists The trouble i think with this common response is that there is an alternative to heightened scrutiny of arab americans and the Alternative is heightened scrutiny across the board If we want to make airlines safer then airport security ought to be forced to increase The it ought to be forced to increase surveillance on everyone Unlike ethnic profiling that kind of heightened scrutiny across the board is consistent with an important ideal of democracy namely The rule of law understood in its broadest sense the rule of law says that when we adopt a policy It has to apply to everyone it cannot be tailored to one person or to one group and we're committed to this ideal Because it requires it forces all of us to ask ourselves an important question When we consider whether we support any policy it forces us to ask ourselves Am I willing to be subject to this law? Am I willing to pay this price in the fight against terrorism? Will my gains in safety outweigh this added burden of searches and interrogations And delays that I will have to go through With ethnic profiling the majority of us never have to ask ourselves that questions for the majority of us Ethnic profiling will be bring no real burden at all just the speculative possibility That will be safer. This is a form of political cheating It secures its majority for policies that infringe on our liberty by asking only one identifiable subgroup of the population To uh to bear those burdens It lets our politics escape the fundamental question here, which is how much of our liberty we ought to be willing to trade For whatever benefits and safety increased surveillance will bring and whether those alleged benefits are real It's no accident. I think that profiling is done somewhat sloppily and without solid evidence that it works And that's because the majority of us aren't burdened by it at all And so we have no incentive to be terribly concerned about whether It's effective Now you might object that my alternative to profiling is unrealistic that we can't Literally interrogate everyone and thoroughly search everyone who gets on a plane But there are things that we can do We can reduce the number of people going through the gates in the first place so that we can more Thoroughly scrutinize the people Who who do go through and that incidentally I think is one of the justifications for Um the idea that we shouldn't let unticketed passengers through the gates You reduce the sort of thorough put We can also use improved technology that screens individuals more Efficiently and use the equipment that airports already have More efficiently we can use random searches and increase the probability that all of us Will be searched We can use behavioral profiling where law enforcement decides whom to scrutinize based on their responses to preliminary questions And we can simply use security approaches that don't have to do with screening at all Like sky marshals and bag matching and other ideas All of those ideas all of those alternatives are consistent with the rule of law in the sense that I just described They require all of us to ask whether the potential benefits Outweigh the likely cost they don't load all of the costs onto one group and give the rest of us a free ride So we shouldn't be misled into thinking that this is a trade-off between safety and equality We can be safe and uphold Essential democratic ideas about equality at the same time if there's a trade-off it's a trade-off With efficiency not with safety Perhaps ethnic profiling would allow security to search and interrogate fewer people To intercept the same number of terrorists perhaps it wouldn't but either way We shouldn't excuse discrimination on the grounds that It's financially difficult and too slow to treat everyone equally The second reason I think we should reject ethnic profiling in any screening practice that has a disparate impact on arab americans is that These policies perpetuate may perpetuate stigma They may exacerbate ethnic tensions and they may undermine the legitimacy of our law enforcement If you and I walking through the airport Invariably or very often see that it is just arab americans who are being detained by airport security We are likely to come a one or two conclusions conclusion number one is that these people really are terrorists That is some of us are going to assume that law enforcement knows what it's doing And that people they've detained either have done something wrong or belong to a dangerous group Conclusion number two is that the problem lies with law enforcement rather than with arab americans That is some of us are going to come to the conclusion that these law enforcement and security agents Are biased that they're engaging in unjustified profiling unfairly stopping innocent people and so on Again, I think these are the most common conclusions that we're likely to come to perhaps unconsciously In the very unconsidered judgments that we're going to make as we hurry through the airports again and again Past these scenes of arab americans being detained at the security gates And I think most of you will agree that that both of them are destructive conclusions conclusion number one exacerbates Racial and ethnic tensions in this country and it perpetuates habits of ethnic stigma Which is one of the most serious problems that our society faces and conclusion number two is hardly better because it undermines the legitimacy of our law enforcement So I just want to conclude quickly by reminding you that the staggering majority of people Who will be burdened by any system of ethnic profiling will be innocent people They will not be terrorists. They will not have done anything wrong. They will not be doing anything wrong And to ask innocent people who happen to be arab american to bear the cost of our war on terrorism is deeply unjust And destructive in all the ways that I just described its antithetical to core principles of the rule of law and democracy It runs a very real risk of exacerbating ethnic tensions in this country and it may end up undermining law enforcement Rather than strengthening it the argument for for ethnic profiling is not about safety But an argument about efficiency and modest savings in time and money if they really exist at all cannot justify That kind of practice Thank you, david We have time for a variety of back and forth between the audience and the panel and I invite your questions your comments your arguments It's a question about your faith and how this present administration is using advisors I've heard some wonderful discussions, you know last night right now and also on radio Of people coming forth from various disciplines offering their thoughts about things And I know that administrations do use advisors, but Do you have any sense having been in an administration as an advisor? How this one is using advisors are they are they really looking for a broad sense of Information and opinion from different disciplines. Are they looking for people who might support what they really want to do anyway? As a person totally ignorant of what goes on at that level Wondering what your thoughts are Well, uh, a couple things. Well, I was in the clinton administration not as an advisor, but as an official So it's different somewhat different respect from this Um, and different administrations really do differ. I mean the president sets the tone for how the white house will operate And how the key agencies will plug in in the policy process At that level it becomes really quite individual Uh So that that's an important dimension. Uh, secondly, uh events drive who has influence Uh, to give you an example from the clinton administration in late 97 98 Much of our foreign policy toward asia Was determined by bob rubin who was our secretary of the treasury Why because there's an asian financial crisis clinton had enormous Confidence, I think rightly so and rubin's judgment on international financial issues and the treasury played a role That eclipsed the pentagon and the state department during that period of time By the end of 2000 That was nowhere in sight All right, so if you apply that kind of thing to the current situation, I think several things are the case one, uh It is natural, uh that the military and security people would gain relative influence Because we are in what is defined as fundamentally a military and security crisis um, secondly, uh I don't know. I'm not going to get personal here, but let me just make a broad comment This administration is composed of very different types of people Uh representing deep divisions within the republican party And while you can find different kinds of folks in different bureaucracies There's a disproportionate, uh Concentration if you will of of extraordinarily right-wing people in the department of defense at high levels right now Much less so in the department of state Less so on the national security council So I think a lot depends upon You know at the highest level when you sit down in a principles committee meeting with you know With six key players around the table and then you go and advise the president from there You know, who's going to have the the greater say? Uh my own sense frankly is that the colon pal a is superb Uh b b is being put in front of the cameras a lot and c is losing influence Uh because I think the dynamics of this are to put the money in the hands of the people over at the pentagon Uh Young as you talk with foreign officials I've had some opportunity to do that in the past week. Uh what you find time and again is almost an expression Of hope The powell will play a larger role now because he was seeing as being marginalized in the internal battles within the administration But real concern that that is not the way it's going to come out Now let me say I share their hope uh because I think and as bob also indicated diplomacy has a huge role to play here uh and a kind of Let's go get them kind of response Is really going to leave us without the allies that we need. I don't mean formal I mean without the cooperation that we need to really do an effective job Um one final comment, which is to say when you get a national security crisis It tends to drive you to look inward rather than outward In the sense that rather than calling all kinds of experts from all over the place and sit and have a chat with them You are so busy Trying to get through the next couple of hours Coordinating the different things that are going on setting up the task forces getting in touch with other governments Making sure your security is in place thinking up new rules for the transportation system Wondering what how we will change the rules in our justice system and so forth It's the last time in the world you have to sit down and have the kind of round table discussion That in a calmer period could really produce some very good ideas And that's just by the nature of things ultimately a very small group of people makes the key Policy decisions and they are just totally inundated at this point Let me add can I add one word to that? Yeah They certainly haven't consulted with Anyone in congress in any kind of serious way In fact, there's been a great deal of disgruntlement on the part of Even some of the key members of the foreign policy and armed services committees Some real disgruntlement on the part of key members of the of the foreign affairs and Armed services committees that they're that they're getting really Any meat in their intelligence briefings at all I think that's fun. I don't think that's the major problem, but I do think it possible In the coming weeks that congress can play the role of doing exactly what? Canada has suggested that in fact they can hold hearings. They can bring in reflective people they can Talk about and would talk about the the kinds of issues that That we've been talking about and that uh, I think in fostering that kind of uh, that kind of uh calmer cooler Um more reasoned approach. Um, I think uh congress could And then force in effect by holding those hearings forcing the administration to pay attention to it Um, um by implicitly Causing the public to pay attention to it. I think they could play a useful role Question over here I think it doesn't look like to go for it anybody I agree I understand your position for turning ethnic profile, but I assume that you are not against profile and per se Uh With qualifications, uh, not not not in all cases, but now let's assume now we we establish a profile that Leaves us to examine closer Not ethnically, but we take a look and see who made three or four trips to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, et cetera And how do you feel about that? Uh, and that seems to be the fAA has a system of profiling in place right now They're very secretive about what criteria they do in fact use most folks people say that they don't use ethnicity per se But they they do use things like travel behavior Um, I'm uncomfortable with any form of profiling and the reason I hesitated at your initial question was i'm uncomfortable I'm comfortable with uncomfortable with any form of profiling that essentially acts as a proxy for ethnicity and that, uh The same arguments that I just made so long as we're talking about, you know Visible detainment so long as we're talking about grossly disproportionate detainment so long as we're talking about Uh a disparate impact that everybody knows about that the same arguments that I described apply and that we should Focus on uh things like behavioral profiling rather than these sort of proxies that get at travel behavior Um, I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but we need to track very carefully How the impact, um Plays out Right Can I just say that uh racial profiling is important But another civil liberties issue that I think is going to be equally important is privacy and who gets to tap our phones and read our email Just as the department has just proposed new legislation Allowing them to violate many more of those Future foreign policy responses, um You mentioned that the conflict continuing situation needed to end Before these types of terrorism could end I'm wondering would us support for a palestinian homeland say we you know radically change would that even be enough though? I mean if the type of terrorism is ideologically based, um against democratic systems against free market capitalism, um, would even full u.s. Support for a palestinian homeland say Be enough, you know I don't think full American support of palestinian homeland would solve the israeli palestinian problem because the israelis um Are still need to accept whatever settlement is reached Right now there's as of yesterday There was an optimistic move by both the palestinian authority and the israeli government To have a ceasefire and the hamas and islamic jihad said that they will not support that Let me add two words to that if I could one I certainly agree that the arab israeli dispute has made all of this much more difficult But I think if you were to resolve that tomorrow terrorism would still be a major problem A lot of the things that motive I mean face it what's happened in part because of forces of globalization and telecommunications revolution all that kind of stuff We benefited more than any other society on earth from all of that We we have such a strong role in the world now that it is difficult for americans to comprehend what we look like if you aren't an american and One of the greatest challenges that this poses is a cultural challenge And there are a lot of folks in different parts of the world who feel That their core values are being undermined their ability to transmit their values to their own children is being undermined By the kinds of processes part of which america promotes and part of which america simply symbolizes right What this terrorist action did And maybe as great as consequence and I should have mentioned this in my remarks I apologize for not doing so is it took this image of an absolutely Invulnerable united states And burst it And it burst it in a way that did more damage in one day Then an army could have done in six months with any army on earth All right If you don't think there are others who have taken a look at that and said thank god And now we can follow up we can pick up the torch if necessary I think it would be naive to think that that those forces aren't out there in a number of societies They're always fringe elements, but what this did was to was to burst a myth Right, and uh in that sense, I think we got a long-term problem I don't think that just the arab-israeli thing was either the sole cause Or it could be the the key to the entire solution And we in fact had a role the u.s. Government had a role in training as i'm a midline and um, but even in washington over the past five years The mainstream foreign policy makers has already recently Oh, afghanistan, you know, we just want to build a fence around it and Let them fight their war it's not an important issue We're really not interested in anyone who has anything to say about that part of work about that country or what's going on there is this to think that the people one who are involved in In the 80s working with these groups are talking to the policy makers And actually know some of it on the people that train these groups Have any insight into their The way of operating and will Will we look at other parts of the world where there's instability and take them more? um I think that we certainly are seeking Uh, good information about The internal dynamics in afghanistan now from people who have been deeply involved there But I think those tend to be russians pakistanis and chinese And then some obviously from our Involving in the 80s, but a lot has changed since the 80s, you know So i've one of the reasons why we're trying to Improve coordination With russia and pakistan and china now is precisely to share the intelligence output with them In a way that can be used effectively um, I you know I don't think that there was serious I'm not sure I understood part of your question correctly. Were you asking in part? Why didn't we In the 90s try to help Establish a stable afghan government Well, the problem is there's instability in much of the world And so you really have to pick where you're going to get involved and where you aren't And when you pick a place what you find very often I'll give you a different example indonesia What you find very often is you cannot get consensus say on capitol hill To allow you to do what you need to do to play an effective role in indonesia Now this is the largest muslim country in the world It is a major has been a major factor for stability and growth in southeast asia until the asian financial crisis Basically saw his government disintegrate and then get patched together in a very wobbly form Uh after the fall of saharto and what we found was we couldn't deal with the government of indonesia Because of the human rights caucus in the congress that would not allow us to deal with the indonesian military Which was the only organization with a nationwide reach in indonesia Right and we wanted to put in aid and wanted to couldn't do a thing Until until the military changed in indonesia. You couldn't do a thing the congress blocked everything you could imagine Right and it wasn't for lack of trying by the administration So what you find is very often you have a lot of different agendas Uh represented in different parts of our government. They're legitimate agendas You very very rarely find a foreign policy issue worth its name That can be dealt with in isolation in terms of that issue scholars study issues in isolation You know, how do you handle this issue or that issue? Policy makers never have that luxury And you always are competing with other interests on other legitimate issues that intrude on what you're trying to do So that even now as we respond in the middle east got to be very concerned about the financial markets Got to be very concerned about energy supplies and what saudi arabia might do Uh, you know, there are all kinds of issues that are going to be cross cutting as we try to focus on counterterrorism Right, so it's just not easy to kind of identify. Oh 10 years from now This place may be something that comes back to haunt us. We better mobilize resources and put them there Uh, you ought that often gets drowned out by others competing for those resources to put them elsewhere for equally good purposes The gentleman over here in that door Deja vu across the world right now Um, so during the well during for the last that's the 10 to 12 years You know, once some people would argue that you went foreign policy And we now have an enemy and I sort of defined any But I have I have two connected questions and they're short questions first One of the big one of the major pillars of u.s. Foreign policy during the nine days was promotion of democracy Are we going to go back on it now that we may want to deal with dictators who have anti-american forces in their backyard Uh, and secondly, uh, which is sort of I mean homing in on this question is like mushara The guy you're dealing with right now is a dictator And and and especially in pakistan's case, uh, their intelligence agency Run two operations One in kashmir and the other one in afghanistan the very closely like that They're sort of they're the defining features of pakistan's foreign policy Now if you want them to shut down the the afghan operation, they're using the same voice to run the operation in kashmir and So if if let's say the u.s. Were to get into a strategic alliance, which pakistan is requesting right now Will they be able to shut down the kashmir operation? So you see that there's a sort of conflict of interest there I'd like professor axelrod and professor Lieberhofer Well, I'll make a clear prediction that that the priority to fight terrorism will trump the priority to promote democracy Now then the question is that a good idea It's a good idea Only so far. It was sort of like in the cold war. We said the Desire to fight communism would trump our desire to promote human rights and democracy So we got in bed with pinotchet And I suspect that now There's going to be a lot of pressure to work with whoever can help us in pakistan is an obvious case And I think we need to keep our eye on some lower Some priorities that are getting lower that they don't disappear entirely the other one is non-proliferation But now I I think you're exactly right and this kashmir at the kashmir issue obviously will Complicate what we have been focused what the administration has been focused on in the last few months Which is improving our ties with india Right and so these again these these things are just the world is not neat And you rarely see a foreign policy issue that you can neatly package and just focus on that without sacrifice and other things That are of great value I'm just wondering if I thought bob mentioned a couple of things at the end of his Talk, I guess my response would be, you know, I try I was trying to think about that when he did that I mean I I think the um Some of the issues that were raised in the panel discussion last night Had to do with such things as american complicity in what in the events that In the chain of events that led to the terrorist attacks You know, we're all assuming that isama bin laden is the culprit here Or that's the way we've been talking. There's also some speculation at least by Experts in the area that that that he simply did not have the organizational or financial capacity to carry it off Perhaps but saddam hussein did And so let's say just for the sake of argument that saddam hussein did and then we Might look at it differently. We might start thinking a bit about You know, what are What's how how how self-righteous we're being or as opposed to how how righteous we are as opposed to how self-righteous we are about can About at least collectively claiming ourselves as Innocence and and I think that at least some discussion about um, sort of the larger willing Thoughtfulness of the united states About what constitutes a just and unjust war and what constitutes Um, justifiable retribution and what doesn't I ought to become part of the discussion and that was raised last night now, I think that if that Those would be the kinds of concerns I would raise if I were writing to my representatives in washington And I think they're going to be paying a lot of attention To the mail that's coming in over the coming weeks, right because it's going to change if the mail is going to change from expressions of outrage and anger to to I mean that's gonna slowly going to die off and You know sort of attempts to raise new issues for consideration, especially issues that are being ignored by the administration I think may receive some consideration by legislators who have the time um to be More thoughtful or to consider a broader range of issues I think they're going to be paying a lot the like your senators and representatives are going to be paying a lot of attention What you say in the next few weeks and so in terms of Trying to communicate with them That really doesn't matter. They're really going to read it. They're going to pay attention to it Their staff are their staff are going to summarize it for them. And I think it stands a chance of affecting what they do I think also universities that that's the short term over the long run What is going to unfold as several of the presentations here have made very clear Uh, we'll be we'll raise issues about the way we govern ourselves and the way we act internationally That are things that will be at the center. I think of what universities will be focusing on in the years to come Uh, and universities make their greatest contribution by educating citizens well Uh, and by being sources of ideas that then get out through the media to your members of congress through government service Through publications and so forth So I think there is a longer term role for the university That is huge because I think some of the things that we have really taken for granted for quite a while Are again, as they have been at earlier points in our history, we're going to be under challenge One of the strategies you suggested to Stop terrorism was to infiltrate somebody's cells and pay terrorists in some cases to You know help our interests With the court and administration they in essence outlaw that policy do you comment on that? It's effective Yeah, one of the things I found fascinating is I've been asked to be on all these panels there about terrorism in the middle east And I was in charge of policy toward asia Where terrorism was not a big issue when I was in the government. Uh, so uh, I come at this somewhat from the outside There were restrictions of various sorts placed on the executive branch some At executive branch initiation some Imposed by the hill rick mentioned earlier the war powers act for example grown directly out of the vietnam war And uh, those are restrictions that tend to be Viable, uh, if you are not facing a dire threat In a sense, you can be more moral you can be closer to your ideal principles when there's not a gun to your head You know and I think the fact that we now have a gun to our head will make people ask Where is the right place to draw the line given what we currently confront? And I think universities have to be asking very seriously And how will that affect the longer term as part of that conversation? In other words things done to meet an immediate Very serious challenge may over the long run be so pernicious that you really need to To stay away from them. Uh, my feeling has been that, uh, They're That essentially we've got to have a little more freedom Uh to recruit some very unsavory characters Because these networks operate in very closed circles And the people in those circles are not pleasant folks and you simply cannot get at them Adequately from outside and they have shown that they can do catastrophic damage politically economically In terms of loss of life and so forth. So personally I think it is time to revisit some of these Uh, you know some of these restrictions that we've imposed on ourselves That doesn't mean toss them all out, but it does mean reconsider and see where the