And to better secure the homeland from attack, we're taking the steps Secretary Napolitano described last week: enhancing information sharing arrangements with our allies and partners; strengthening partnerships with state and local officials, law enforcement, and first responders; and improving the security of our critical infrastructure, borders, ports, and airports.
Our homeland security efforts include working aggressively to prevent and prepare for bio-terrorism, which is why the President's budget makes major investments in our public health infrastructure, including new technologies to detect attacks and new vaccines to respond in a crisis. And I would note that our coordinated response to the H1N1 virus-across the federal government, with state and local governments, and with the private sector and the public-and our extensive preparations for the coming flu season will ensure that we are better prepared for any future bio-terrorist attack.
So there should be no doubt. As the President has told us privately and as he has said publicly, this administration "will do everything in our power to keep the American people safe...with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda."
At the same time, the President understands that military power, intelligence operations, and law enforcement alone will never solve the second, longer-term challenge we face: the threat of violent extremism generally, including the political, economic, and social factors that help put so many individuals on the path to violence. And here is where I believe President Obama is bringing a fundamentally new and more effective approach to the long-term obligation of safeguarding the American people. This new approach has five key elements.
First, and perhaps most significantly, the fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining-indeed, distorting-our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies. President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not be defined simply by what we are against, but by what we are for-the opportunity, liberties, prosperity, and common aspirations we share with the world.
Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism-whether they are with us or against us-the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas. Rather than treating so many of our foreign affairs programs-foreign assistance, development, democracy promotion-as simply extensions of the fight against terrorists, we will do these things-promote economic growth, good governance, transparency and accountability-because they serve our common interests and common security; not just in regions gripped by violent extremism, but around the world.
We see this new approach most vividly in the President's personal engagement with the world-his trips, his speeches, his town halls with foreign audiences-where he addresses terrorism directly and forcefully. At the same time, terrorism is recognized as one of the many transnational challenges the world will face in the 21st Century. We saw this in his speech in Cairo, where he spoke of a "broader engagement" with the world's Muslims, including the issues important to them: education, public health, economic development, responsive governance, and women's rights.
Indeed, it was telling that the President was actually criticized in certain quarters in this country for not using words like "terror," "terrorism" or "terrorist" in that speech. This goes to the heart of his new approach. Why should a great and powerful nation like the United States allow its relationship with more than a billion Muslims around the world be defined by the narrow hatred and nihilistic actions of an exceptionally small minority of Muslims? After all, this is precisely what Osama bin Laden intended with the Sept. 11 attacks: to use al Qaeda to foment a clash of civilizations in which the United States and Islam are seen as distinct identities that are in conflict. In his approach to the world and in his approach to safeguarding the American people, President Obama is determined not to validate al Qaeda's twisted worldview.
This leads directly to the second element of the President's approach-a clear, more precise definition of this challenge. This is critically important. How you define a problem shapes how you address it. As many have noted, the President does not describe this as a "war on terrorism." That is because "terrorism" is but a tactic-a means to an end, which in al Qaeda's case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate. Confusing ends and means is dangerous, because by focusing on the tactic, we risk floundering among the terrorist trees while missing the growth of the extremist forest. And ultimately, confusing ends and means is self-defeating, because you can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself.
Likewise, the President does not describe this as a "global war." Yes, al Qaeda and other terrorists groups operate in many corners of the world and continue to launch attacks in different nations, as we saw most recently in Jakarta. And yes, the United States will confront al Qaeda aggressively wherever it exists so that it enjoys no safe haven. But describing our efforts as a "global war" only plays into the warped narrative that al Qaeda propagates. It plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the U.S. is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world. It risks setting our Nation apart from the world, rather than emphasizing the interests we share. And perhaps most dangerously, portraying this as a "global" war risks reinforcing the very image that al Qaeda seeks to project of itself-that it is a highly organized, global entity capable of replacing sovereign nations with a global caliphate. And nothing could be further from the truth.
Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against "jihadists." Describing terrorists in this way-using a legitimate term, "jihad," meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal-risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in his speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.
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