Failure on a Number of Fronts

The Sept. 11 commission divided its recommendations into two basic parts: What to do and how to do it.

What to Do

* Root out sanctuaries. The U.S. government should identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries and have realistic country or regional strategies for each, utilizing every element of national power and reaching out to countries that can help us.

* Strengthen long-term U.S. and international commitments to the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

* Confront problems with Saudi Arabia in the open and build a relationship beyond oil, a relationship that both sides can defend to their citizens and one that includes a shared commitment to reform.

* Define the message and stand as an example of moral leadership in the world. To Muslim parents, terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have the advantage -- our vision can offer a better future.

* Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not offer opportunity, respect the rule of law, or tolerate differences, then the United States needs to stand for a better future.

* Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic world through much stronger public diplomacy to reach more people, including students and leaders outside of government. Our efforts here should be as strong as they were in combating closed societies during the Cold War.

* Offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education and economic openness.

* Develop a comprehensive coalition strategy against Islamist terrorism, using a flexible contact group of leading coalition governments and fashioning a common coalition approach on issues like the treatment of captured terrorists.

* Devote a maximum effort to the parallel task of countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

* Expect less from trying to dry up terrorist money and more from following the money for intelligence, as a tool to hunt terrorists, understand their networks and disrupt their operations.

* Set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses.

* Develop strategies for neglected parts of our transportation security system. Since 9/11, about 90% of the nation’s $5-billion annual investment in transportation security has gone to aviation.

* In aviation, prevent arguments about a new computerized profiling system from delaying vital improvements in the “no-fly” and “automatic selectee” lists. Also, give priority to the improvement of checkpoint screening.

* Determine, with leadership from the president, guidelines for gathering and sharing information in the new security systems that are needed, guidelines that integrate safeguards for privacy and other essential liberties.

How to Do It

* We call for unity of effort in five areas, beginning with unity of effort on the challenge of counterterrorism itself.

* Unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a national counterterrorism center; unifying the intelligence community with a new national intelligence director.

* Unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information-sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries.

* Unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and accountability.

* Strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders.