Bush’s Terrorism Policies Preserve Our Civil Liberties

To the editors:

In “Feith’s Speech Draws Hostile Reaction at IOP” (News, Mar. 4) you quote some words from my speech the previous day out of context and thus create an impression that is the opposite of the speech’s main point. I did not argue that we should change the way we live in order to fight the war on terror. On the contrary, as I said in my speech, “The President has declared that our war aim is to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society.”

This point becomes clear when you consider the entirety of the sentence you quoted from my speech: “Beyond the cost in lives and property, the 9/11 attack—or rather our reaction to it—exposed a far-reaching element of the threat posed by terrorism: To protect ourselves physically, we might feel compelled to change fundamentally the way we live, sacrificing our society’s openness for hoped-for safety.”

As I explained: “Terrorism takes advantage of and thereby endangers the openness and trust that allow us to enjoy our freedom and prosperity…If the strategy for preventing that next attack were to be solely or even primarily defensive, it would require a wholesale clamping down, not just at our borders but throughout the country.”

I then noted, “To preserve civil liberties, the President had to adopt a strategy of disrupting terrorist networks abroad, where they do much of their planning, recruiting, and training. He had to adopt a strategy of initiative and offense…The President decided that, in dealing with the terrorists, he either had to change the way we live, or change the way they live.”

DOUGLAS J. FEITH ’75

Washington, D.C.

March 8, 2005

The writer is Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.