November 8, 2004 - We Democrats recognize that the first duty of Government is to provide for the safety of its citizens. We also recognize that it is the duty of Government to do so without doing violence to the individual citizen’s rights under the Constitution and our body of laws. We cannot make Americans secure by making them less free. Nor can we make America secure by isolating her from the world and extinguishing the Lamp of Liberty that has beckoned the rest of the world to our shores.

We recognize that in the struggle against international terrorism we cannot rely upon military might to extinguish the threat. We do not face regiments and battalions poised to attack. The dramatic destruction of the World Trade Center was prepared by 19 dedicated men anxious to die to do America harm. They came to the United States separately. They spread out across the country in ones and twos. They prepared for their task in the United States and came together only when it was time to execute the plot. They feared no punishment because they knew when their plot was executed they would be beyond the reach of American justice.

It was not that their preparations were undetected. The eye of suspicion had indeed fallen upon them. Alert local FBI agents in Arizona and Minnesota detected their preparations and reported their suspicions. Two of the 19 were on an undistributed terrorist watch list when they entered the United States. No battalion of troops; no attack in Afghanistan; no conquest in the Middle East could have prevented 9-11. Only coordinated hard dogged work by dedicated counter-terrorism agents and local police could have detected the plot, apprehended the plotters and nipped it in the bud.

But no matter how dogged, how dedicated and how perceptive American counter-terrorism and police forces might have been their efforts could not have been effective standing alone. While the attack was prepared in America it was planned abroad, its agents were recruited abroad, and it was financed from abroad. The fight against international terrorism requires the coordination of counter-terrorism agencies across national borders. Terrorism attacks in Madrid, Paris, Rome, or London are as much attacks on us as those we suffered in New York and Washington.

We call for a new Counter-Terrorism Alliance Organization on the model of NATO in which an international counter-terrorism force is created. Under a central authority detection, investigation, and interdiction operations would not be constrained by international borders or national jurisdiction. An elite anti-terrorism strike force modeled on the British SAS or the US Delta Force would operate under CTAO command. Terrorists apprehended by CTAO, whether arrested before a planned attack or brought to justice following a successful strike, would be delivered to the national jurisdiction of the nation toward which the plot was directed and dealt with in accordance with that nation’s law.

America can only be made secure against international terrorism in all of its manifestations to the extent that each nation of the world is secure. It is folly to believe that we can fight a war on terror isolated from the rest of the world. Only a coordinated and international effort can be effective. Terrorism is an international crime and combating it demands and international effort. We pledge to lead that fight on behalf of America and the rest of the civilized world.