Speaking of young people trying new things, another U.S. citizen was just arrested for conspiring with al-Qaida against the U.S. And Pakistan announced that it has some U.S.-born members of al-Qaida in custody. Does it surprise you when you hear about this?
Not at all. One would suppose it. I think there are al-Qaida cells in the U.S. right now -- though by now they're calling themselves something else. And I think by now have plans and they're searching for a means of carrying out those plans. I think they're in most countries in Europe, certainly in Pakistan. And I think they're in touch with each other. The president was really right about one thing: This is going to take between five and 10 years. And even then we won't know if we've won. These things metastasize.
You know, these are not nation-states. There certainly won't be a day when you see a secretary of state, like Colin Powell, or a defense secretary, like Rumsfeld, sitting on one side of a table and the minister of defense of al-Qaida on the other side, and they sign a piece of paper. We won't know when we beat them.
The issues are clearly complex. We want to have Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner, for example, but then again the strike against the U.S. was financed from Saudi Arabia and something like 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Not to mention Mr. Bin Laden. If you were president right now how would you deal with the Saudis?
On the surface pretty much the same way we are now. Underneath, however, I would say "You are going to have to change a lot of things in your country to survive. Keep your religion, keep your social structure, but you are going to have to democratize. And you are going to have to let people know that you're going to democratize. You're going to need to set a timetable for elections, you're going to need to create a parliament -- your princes can run for parliament, or they can serve in the ministries. But you've got to open up your society. Get a competitive press and let the press criticize you. Open up your society. Give women independence and freedom -- and you can do that within your religion."
But you know you've got to walk a fine line between letting any nation and any society keep its traditions and letting it adapt to the world. Though it's in its own interests to do so. It's in our interests, too, but we're also trying to help them preserve themselves so they don't find themselves in chalets in Switzerland overnight. My impression is that the Saudi royal family has jets at the airport all fueled up, money squirreled away, pilots on call, like when the Shah left Iran just before the radicals took over.
We also need a much different energy policy. So I'd also say to them, "We're on a five- to 10-year timetable where we're going to reduce our reliance on your oil and replace it with Russian oil. We want you to know that this is going to be our policy." And yes, that would make them unhappy, because they've got their hooks into us. But they have their hooks into others, like the Chinese.
Would reducing our reliance on foreign oil also include a component of drilling at home, such as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Wouldn't that make sense?
Mathematically, it's not necessary; the oil just isn't there. If you apply different fuel efficiency standards to automobiles and stimulate alternative renewable supplies and all that. All of us who worked on this in the '70s and '80s knew the math on this -- I don't know it anymore. ANWR became a symbol for the Bush administration policy of plundering our own resources at any cost. But we don't need to do it. The Russians have got a lot of oil. And it's gonna be a much more reliable supply than from any nation in the Persian Gulf.
Oil from the Gulf may be cheaper now, but it's subsidized by taxpayers, and by American soldiers. That's a subsidy -- it's a subsidy in human lives. The policy is we as a nation go into dangerous places to get oil and we go to war to protect it. If it gets cut off, our sons and daughters may lose their lives in that war. If politicians said that to the public, I think people may begin to drive different cars. But nobody's said it to them that way. "Drive your SUVs that get 12 miles to a gallon, and by the way it may cost your children's lives." That's exactly our policy right now.
When we spoke Sept. 12, you were also angry at the media for not having paid enough attention to terrorism pre-9/11. You said that a reporter with the New York Times abjectly refused to cover one of your commission's reports. Why do you think the media, before Sept. 11, paid scant attention to these issues?
I don't know. It's funny; reporters ask me that. I have no idea. Well, I do have ideas. Ownership structure, value structures, what sells papers. Why are morning TV programs lifestyle and not hard news the way it used to be? Because some vice president upstairs responsible for corporate profits said, "People want more diet and fashion than they do energy policy." Or terrorism, or whatever. You can see it -- stories are placed differently in newspapers now. What oughta be on the front page is on Page 16, and what oughta be on Page 16 is on the front page. You can do lifestyle stuff, you can do trendy stuff, it's placement and proportion. Lifestyle stuff has almost overwhelmed hard news and information.
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