Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has come around to the view that the U.S. should spend more on foreign aid, scholarships for foreign students and "soft power," basically making friends in the world.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said traditional security measures are important but "a lasting victory in safeguarding the country" requires winning "a contest of ideas, and a battle for the allegiance of men and women around the world."
His own department has hardly been a big help in that contest.
In 2004 -- before Chertoff took over DHS -- the State department, at the request of Homeland Security, revoked the work visa of one of the world's leading Muslim scholars only days before the was to take up a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, had already shipped his household furniture to the U.S. and enrolled his daughter in school at South Bend.
Rather than go through the hassle of proving in our Kafka-like bureaucracy that he did not espouse terrorism, the Muslim moderate gave up the teaching post and returned to the University of Friburg. There's a U.S. friend for life.
Or Elena Lappin, a British journalist, who was stopped at Los Angeles airport by Homeland Security officials, body searched, handcuffed, frog-marched through the airport, held in a cell overnight and put back on a plane the next morning. We'll bet she was moved to write good things about us when she got back.
Lappin did not have a special journalist visa, an old and long ignored rule that Homeland Security decided to enforce. Why do journalists need a special visa at all to come here? It amounts to licensing journalists, which is unconstitutional in this country. True, visas at the State department's responsibility but Homeland Security has a lot of say in the matter.
Chertoff is right about soft power. Being welcoming and accommodating to foreign students, visiting professors and journalists is a good place to start.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Well said and a great idea.
Well said and a great idea. Chertoff is right about soft power. It works all the time. Most of the human beings are not pushy unless they are pushed. Secondly, higher standards of living and freedom of speech in US turns monsters in to cows !
Finally their next generation automatically start behaving like locals so where do you loose ?
Hard power should be maintained, may be not shown all the times, as people when afraid, act like monkeys !
Thank God, we don't have parades like other countries have, where they show their armaments to their own citizens live, to give them the foolish pride, and show on televison to foreigners scaring them, and they become monkeys !
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