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Safe at home: at the dawn of the Cold War, America''s leaders created new institutions that made us safer. Fast forward to the present. Why isn''t the Bush administration following their example?

Article Excerpt
President Bush got one thing right: The greatest threat to American security is a rogue state providing a terrorist group with a weapon of mass destruction and the means to deliver it in the United States. Unfortunately, almost everything he has done since September 11 has made this problem worse rather than better. We need new policies, new approaches and new institutions to reduce this risk.

The Bush administration took positive steps immediately following 9-11 that should be built upon. It went to the United Nations Security Council, worked collaboratively with the other permanent members and the entire council, and secured passage of a set of resolutions requiring states to take steps to curb international terrorism. The UN also established mechanisms for international cooperation in dealing with terrorist threats. Acting under the authority of Security Council resolutions, the United States intervened militarily in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda bases of operation and remove the Taliban from power.

Things have gone downhill since then. If our goal is, as it should be, to reduce the risk that international terrorists will acquire true weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, we are most certainly moving in the wrong direction. The immediate post 9-11 impulse to work through the UN and to strengthen universal norms and means for their enforcement has given way to unilateral policies, an emphasis on force rather than legitimacy and an effort to impose rules on others that we refuse to abide by ourselves. The initial post-9-11 focus on addressing the immediate threats abroad--the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups with a global reach--while revamping security at home has given way to a preoccupation with Iraq and confrontations with the other members of what the president called the "axis of evil."

At home, with the exception of the hastily developed and poorly executed plan to cobble together a Department of Homeland Security, the administration has resisted efforts to create the new organizations required to deal effectively with this new threat. Moreover, we have failed to respect civil liberties at home, and by our example and our entreaties have encouraged other governments to take repressive steps that can only breed more terrorism in the long run.

A brief review of what we have done over the past two years provides a basis for determining what needs to be done from this point forward to make us safer.

Global Cooperation Against International Terrorism

Some progress has been made to enhance cooperation on intelligence sharing and money laundering; likewise, many countries have acted against groups on an agreed list of terrorist organizations. The administration has not, however, continued to provide leadership. It has jeopardized cooperation on international terrorism, first by its unilateral actions in Iraq and now by arguing that cooperation there is the test of whether other governments are with us in the fight against terrorism.

Afghanistan What we have done in Afghanistan is...