Homeland Security chief warns candidates about ‘overreaction’ on national security

As Republican presidential candidates prepared to face off on foreign policy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson called for calmer rhetoric on national security.

Speaking Wednesday at a small liberal arts college in central Missouri, Johnson said the country needs to resist hysteria about security concerns, avoid stereotyping Muslims as terrorists and reject the temptation to “erect more walls, install more screening devices, and make everybody suspicious of each other.”

Johnson acknowledged that Islamic State and other terrorist groups seek to inspire Americans to launch attacks at home.

“In this environment, the first impulse may be to suspect all Muslims living among us in this country are potential terrorists,” Johnson said. “The reality is the self-proclaimed Islamic State does not represent the Islamic faith, and we must not confuse the two.”

Johnson’s comments came days after police in Texas detained a 14-year-old Muslim boy after he brought a homemade clock to school, and his teacher thought it might be a bomb. Details of the teenager’s arrest were widely shared on social media, and on Wednesday police announced that no charges would be brought.

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Candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination have ratcheted up their calls for tougher national security measures in recent weeks.

Ben Carson said Sunday the U.S. should use “every means possible” to eradicate Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Donald Trump has said he’d build a wall across the Southwest border of the U.S. and make Mexico pay for it.

On Tuesday, speaking on the deck of the Iowa, a World War II-era battleship docked in Los Angeles Harbor, Trump promised a massive military build up if elected “to make our military so big and so strong and so great and it will be so powerful that I don’t think we’re ever going to have to use it.”

Johnson said that policymakers should be mindful of the balance between security measures and individual freedoms.

“We must guard against the dangers of overreaction in the name of homeland security,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of imposing on the public as much security as our resources will permit.”

After the Ebola outbreak last year, Johnson said, his first impulse was to limit travel visas from West Africa to the U.S.

But officials on the National Security Council convinced him that the U.S. would be setting the wrong example by isolating a region that desperately needed round-trip flights for medical personnel and other assistance.

Instead, the U.S. decided to direct all air travel from affected countries to five airports for enhanced screening.

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“I can build you a perfectly safe city, but it will amount to a prison,” he said.

Johnson spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., as part of a lecture series that over the years has included former President Harry S. Truman, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

It was during a 1946 speech at the college that Winston Churchill first used the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe the line of Soviet control that cut across Eastern Europe.

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

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