MARINA DEL REY, CA--Rather than sending law-enforcement agents to invade our privacy at home, America should be sending soldiers to invade hostile powers abroad, says Robert Tracinski, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. Robert W. Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute between 1997 and 2004.
"The new focus on 'homeland security' and giving new powers to the FBI is part of an ominous trend: the only action the U.S. government is now taking in response to terrorism is purely defensive," says Tracinski. "But no archipelago of law-enforcement agencies can keep America safe. They can only try to stop attacks that have already been conceived and planned by terrorists who have already been funded, armed, trained and dispatched to the United States."
America is on the defensive, Tracinski explains, "because our leaders don't have the moral courage to take the offensive. Faced with cowardly quavering from Europe, obstructionism from the United Nations and petulant posturing from Arab princes, they have given up on confronting countries like Syria, Iran and even Iraq.
"The only effective way to stop terrorism is to eliminate its state sponsors. The only real defense is: a renewed offense."