IRVINE, CA--"In blaming the FBI for the attacks of September 11 and proposing to create a new Department of Homeland Security, our politicians have lost sight of the fundamental issue," said a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.
      "What made September 11 possible," said Dr. Onkar Ghate, "is not intelligence failures but the accommodating, range-of-the-moment, unprincipled foreign policy that has shaped our decisions for decades. In spite of the years of mounting evidence of our enemies' deadly intentions--the taking of hostages at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, the bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000--we responded only with short-sighted, self-contradictory appeasement. We sought rapprochement with Iran in a secret weapons-for-hostages deal, refused to support Israel's efforts to destroy the PLO killers, and dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of the suspected camps of al-Qaeda, while waiting for its attacks to fade from the headlines.
      "Unfortunately, little has changed since September 11. Despite Bush's rhetoric about an "axis of evil," he has attacked only one country, Afghanistan. And even here, morally unsure of his decision, he allowed numerous Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to escape. He also continues to pretend that those attacking Israel--and who have attacked Americans in the past and will try again in the future--are, somehow, different from the killers in Afghanistan.
      "What we need," said Dr. Ghate, "is not a new Department of Homeland Security but a new foreign policy."

ARI senior fellow Onkar Ghate is available for interviews on this topic.