The 20th Century Express: Theodore Roosevelt by Richard Lacayo

Presidents come and go, but monuments are always with us. There's a reason Theodore Roosevelt is the only 20th century President whose face is carved into Mount Rushmore, the only one who could hold his own with Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson. Roosevelt not only remade America, but he also charmed the pants off everybody while he did it. And just short of a century after he left the White House, in 1909, the collective memory of his strength and intellect and charisma still lingers. How many times over the years since have Americans settled their affections on some thoughtful, vigorous man who reminded them a bit of Roosevelt? What was Ernest Hemingway if not a later edition of Teddy, without the burden of office but still equipped with T.R.'s literate machismo? And who could look at John F. Kennedy, scrimmaging with his clan at Hyannis Port, and not be reminded of another young President, tussling with his kids at Sagamore Hill? Is it any surprise when more recent Presidents try to borrow a bit of his halo? Bill Clinton had Teddy's bust on his desk. George W. Bush let it be known that he spent last Christmas vacation reading a Roosevelt biography, his second since he got to the White House.

Teddy stays with us because he seems so much like one of us. Although he was born in 1858, it's the 20th century he decidedly belongs to, the century he brought America into on his terms. Roosevelt's years in the White House were one of those hinges upon which the whole of American history sometimes turns. When he arrived there, he already understood the energies that had been building in the U.S. for decades after the Civil War: the explosion of its industrial power, the ineluctable impulse to expand. He used his presidency to discharge those energies in ways that left the U.S. profoundly changed. Again and again, he framed the questions we still ask. How much influence should the government have over the economy? How much power should the U.S. exert in the wider world? What should we do to protect the environment? The answer he liked best--More--didn't satisfy everyone. It still doesn't. But anytime we offer our own, we know that we do it with him looking over our shoulders.

Where was his impact the greatest? Start with the economy. When Roosevelt first came to the presidency, after the assassination of William McKinley, the U.S. was emerging as one of the world's wealthiest nations. It was first in the world in its output of timber, steel, coal, iron. Since 1860 the population had doubled, exports had tripled. But that bounding growth had brought with it all the upheavals of an industrial age--poverty, child labor, dreadful factory conditions. Year after year, workers faced off against bosses with their fists clenched.

Roosevelt came to believe that government had the right to moderate the excesses of free enterprise. Although his exercises of power seem modest to us now--the breakup of monopolies, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the meat-inspection and industrial-safety laws--it was a shock to the system at the time. Roosevelt--a Republican!--insisted that one of the things government must govern is the economy. Today, when the Justice Department goes after Microsoft or Enron, when the Environmental Protection Agency adjusts mileage standards or the Fed tweaks the prime, somewhere his ghost is smiling.

By the time he returned to politics in 1912 to make an attempt at a third term in the White House, running under the banner of the Progressive Party, he felt free to set out an even more radical vision of what must be done. Social Security, regulation of stock trading, a minimum wage--those ideas would not be adopted until the presidency more than two decades later of his distant cousin Franklin. But T.R. set them seriously in motion.

As at home, so in the world: in all places Roosevelt was an activist. He was the first President to urge wholeheartedly that the U.S. accept its role as a global power. God knows, he accepted it. He looked at the U.S. the way we now understand the universe, as a thing that began expanding the moment it was born. (It tells you something that he never got over the habit of casting covetous glances toward Canada.) But not until just before he reached the presidency had the nation finally burst through its continental confines. In 1898 the Spanish-American War and its aftermath had placed under U.S. supervision a whole collection of territories and dependencies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Suddenly, to Roosevelt's utter delight, the U.S. was acting on a world stage, across two oceans. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy under McKinley--a job that should have been nearly meaningless but that he turned into a power center--he had urged on the war. As a Rough Rider, he had fought in it. As President, he would make Americans understand that their new global prominence was a long-term proposition.

He was right, of course. Roosevelt sounded the first chords of the American Century. But the Spanish-American War was a quick and easy victory. Although it was followed by a bloody anti-American insurgency in the Philippines, one that dragged on through Roosevelt's presidency, for the most part he did not live to see the lethal predicaments a global power can face. We can't know what he might have thought about Vietnam, much less Iraq. His expansionist impulse had its idealistic side; he too talked about spreading democracy. And you could see its legacy in developments after his death, like the Marshall Plan. But every time the U.S. contrived to overthrow an elected leader abroad who proved resistant to U.S. aims, some of Teddy's legacy was also at work. There could not have been a more literal legacy than the 1953 coup engineered by the U.S. to oust Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian Prime Minister who attempted to nationalize Iran's oil industry. The CIA officer in Tehran who choreographed the overthrow was Roosevelt's grandson Kermit.

Another of Roosevelt's legacies was an unambiguous gift to the future. Teddy was never more himself than when he was outdoors. He loved nature, knew the songs of dozens of birds, loved to ride, climb, hike and shoot. As a boy he wanted to be a naturalist, and as a President he became the first to make environmentalism a political issue. Under the tutelage of his friends--naturalist and Sierra Club founder John Muir, who convinced Teddy that the Federal Government would be a better protector of parkland than the states, and U.S. Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot, who wanted strict controls over commercial use of woodlands--Roosevelt learned to shape his love of nature into a policy to defend it. The year after leaving the White House, he explained his philosophy to an audience in Kansas. He recognized the right, he said, even the "duty" of his generation to use the nation's natural resources. "But I do not recognize the right to waste them," he added. "Or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."

We are those generations, and we have him to thank not only for the 150 national forests he created, the 51 national wildlife refuges, the five national parks, but also for the very idea that air, water, forests and animal life were somehow in our collective safekeeping. If he were alive today, he would be deeply interested in such matters as global warming and the preservation of species.

Roosevelt was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud's, but a less self-analytical man would be hard to imagine. He was outer directed in every way and keenly receptive to the possibilities of the moment. Henry Adams, the most nuanced mind of Roosevelt's day, was exactly right when he called him "pure act." Roosevelt entered the White House after three decades during which Congress had consistently had the upper hand over the President. He lost no time in making it plain that he was a different breed. The "imperial presidencies" that followed his, from those of Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, all owe something to his example. When Congress did nothing to curb the power of the trusts--huge monopolistic corporations--Roosevelt simply directed his Justice Department to start bringing suits. When Congress balked at embarking on the Panama Canal, Teddy found a way to go forward. "I took the Isthmus," he later explained, "started the canal and then left Congress--not to debate the canal, but to debate me." He added dryly, "But while the debate goes on, the canal does too." No one would ever have to wonder what he meant when he said, "While President, I have been President--emphatically."

He did everything emphatically. Above all, he had a supreme sense of the great future in store for the U.S. No one was ever more certain of the nation's destiny. Few Presidents were more formidable in shaping it. More than that, he gave the nation a picture of itself as a place that could not fail to succeed, because it produced people who were vigorous and commanding--people like Teddy Roosevelt. It's not just that he was excited to be an American. He made it more exciting to be one.

U.S. Government Terrorist Financing Initiative Involving S.W.I.F.T. by Dennis Lormel

This morning, media reports disclosed the U.S. Government’s use of the SWIFT network in furtherance of its terrorist financing initiative. My initial reaction is one of pride and despair. As a former government official, I was involved in this program. On one hand, I’m proud of the notable work performed and what has been accomplished. On the other hand, I’m disappointed and concerned that the media felt compelled to run another story that undermines National Security in the fight on terrorism by disrupting and diminishing an important investigative tool.

By way of background, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) provides electronic messaging services that direct financial transactions worth trillions of dollars a day among around 7,800 financial institutions throughout the world. As detailed in the various media reports, the Treasury Department has been receiving SWIFT information since shortly after 9/11. Personally, I’m astounded that the program has remained confidential this long. It was an innovative and remarkable program. As custodian of the program, Treasury provided the SWIFT information to the CIA, who managed the program. The FBI, in conjunction with the CIA and Treasury, exploited financial information to thwart terrorists, exposing them to areas of financial vulnerability.

For my colleagues who have been skeptical of the U.S. Government’s efforts in terrorist financing, this program, the cooperation with other financial providers, such as First Data Corporation and Western Union, contributed significantly to the A- grade given the Government for Terrorist Financing by the 9/11 Commission. Many of the successes achieved in terrorist financing have not reached the public domain. The anonymity afforded, up until this point, has provided the interagency community the opportunity to continue to exploit terrorists through their financial vulnerabilities.

As more information becomes known and as subject matter experts and the media assess the program, they should not lose sight of the fact that the program was strictly monitored and audited. The field of information actually reviewed was quite minimal in comparison to the universe of SWIFT records that exist. SWIFT records were provided to the Treasury Department in accordance with Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) subpoenas. This initiative was operated in accordance to the law. Before rushing to judgment, critics should appreciate the level of scrutiny and accountability that was put in place to ensure SWIFT information was used solely for terrorist investigative purposes. In addition, assertions that the information reviewed did not lead to positive results would be wrong.

As this situation unfolds, the question should again be posed as to why the media felt compelled to publish a story that undermines National Security by exposing a viable investigative technique to terrorists. A productive and important investigative mechanism has been disrupted and greatly diminished. Once again, why is the media more seemingly concerned about the need to inform the American public about terrorist intelligence operations that involve public records than they are about the adverse impact the report has on National Security?

Not to end on a troubling note, its time to applaud the interagency community, in this case, particularly the Treasury Department, CIA and FBI for outstanding investigative initiative with respect to the execution of the SWIFT program. The interagency cooperation and team work was unwavering throughout the last five years. Many successes were quietly achieved by a group of true unsung heroes. Well done guys!

Deluded America by Diana West

I can see it now, I think. It is on the right-hand page of a book by or about Winston Churchill, and it is a quotation by Churchill on the subject of war. Specifically, what happens to a civilized society when it goes to war with a barbarous one. I can't find it (yet), but what I remember as being the main point was that if the civilized society is to prevail over the barbarous one, it will necessarily and tragically be degraded by the experience as a vital cost of victory. Partly, this is because civilized war tactics are apt to fail against barbarous war tactics, thus requiring civilized society to break the "rules" if it is to survive a true death struggle. It is also because the clash itself — the act of engaging with the barbarous society — forces civilization to confront, repel and also internalize previously unimagined depredations. This is degrading, too.

In Churchill's era, the more civilized world of the Allies was necessarily degraded to some intangible extent by what it took to achieve victory over barbarous Nazism. For example, bombing cities, even rail transportation hubs, lay beyond civilized conventions, but these were tactics the Allies used to defeat Hitler. However justifiable, civilization crossed a previously unimagined and uncivilized line to save, well, civilization. Then there was Hitler's Holocaust — an act of genocide of previously unthinkable scale and horror. Who in the civilized world before Hitler had ever imagined killing 6 million people? And who in the civilized world retained the same purity of mind afterward? Civilization itself was forever dimmed.

The question is, did bombing Dresden to defeat Hitler or dropping two nuclear bombs to force Japan to stop fighting make the Allies into barbarians?

I think most people would still say of course not and argue that such destructive measures were necessary to save civilization itself — and certainly thousands of mainly American and Allied lives. But if this argument continues to carry the day, it's because we still view that historic period from its own perspective. We view it from a perspective in which Allied lives — our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons — counted for more than Axis lives, even those of women and children.

How quaint. That is, this is not at all how we think anymore. If we still valued our own men more than the enemy and the "civilians" they hide among — and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq — our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, and not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran and not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

In the 21st century, however, there is something that our society values more than our own lives — and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people — Western elites — never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadists. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of, anyone who does. This, of course, only enhances their own moral superiority. But it doesn't win wars. And it won't save civilization.

Why not? Because such smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides, don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other. They don't even believe one culture is just plain different from the other. Only in this atmosphere of politically correct and perpetually adolescent non-judgmentalism could anyone believe, for example, that compelling, forcing or torturing a jihadist terrorist to get information to save a city undermines our "values" in any way. It undermines nothing — except the jihad.

Do such tactics diminish our inviolate sanctimony? You bet. But so what? The alternative is to follow our precious rules and hope the barbarians will leave us alone, or, perhaps, not deal with us too harshly. Fond hope. Consider the 21st-century return of (I still can't quite believe it) beheadings. The first French Republic aside, who on God's modern green earth ever imagined a head being hacked off the human body before we were confronted with Islamic jihad? Civilization itself is forever dimmed — again.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, RIP.