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Hi, everybody. This week, I’ve been speaking about America’s national security – our past, our present, and our future.
On Thursday, I outlined the future of our fight against terrorism – the threats we face, and the way in which we will meet them.
On Friday, I went to Annapolis to celebrate the extraordinary young
men and women of the United States Naval Academy’s Class of 2013 – the
sailors and Marines who will not only lead that fight, but who will lead
our country for decades to come.
And on Monday, we celebrate Memorial Day. Unofficially, it’s the
start of summer – a chance for us to spend some time with family and
friends, at barbecues or the beach, getting a little fun and relaxation
in before heading back to work.
It’s also a day on which we set aside some time, on our own or with
our families, to honor and remember all the men and women who have given
their lives in service to this country we love.
They are heroes, each and every one. They gave America the most
precious thing they had – “the last full measure of devotion.” And
because they did, we are who we are today – a free and prosperous
nation, the greatest in the world.
At a time when only about one percent of the American people bear the
burden of our defense, the service and sacrifice of our men and women
in uniform isn’t always readily apparent. That’s partly because our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and coast guardsmen are so skilled at
what they do. It’s also because those who serve tend to do so
quietly. They don’t seek the limelight. They don’t serve for our
admiration, or even our gratitude. They risk their lives, and many give
their lives, for something larger than themselves or any of us: the
ideals of liberty and justice that make America a beacon of hope for the
world.
That’s been true throughout our history – from our earliest days,
when a tiny band of revolutionaries stood up to an Empire, to our 9/11
Generation, which continues to serve and sacrifice today.
Every time a threat has risen, Americans have risen to meet it. And
because of that courage – that willingness to fight, and even die –
America endures.
That is the purpose of Memorial Day. To remember with gratitude the
countless men and women who gave their lives so we could know peace and
live in freedom.
And we must do more than remember.
We must care for the loved ones that our fallen service members have left behind.
We must make sure all our veterans have the care and benefits they’ve earned, and the jobs and opportunity they deserve.
We must be there for the military families whose loved ones are in harm’s way – for they serve as well.
And above all, we must make sure that the men and women of our armed
forces have the support they need to achieve their missions safely at
home and abroad.
The young men and women I met at the Naval Academy this week know the
meaning of service. They’ve studied the heroes of our history.
They’ve chosen to follow in their footsteps – to stand their watch, man a
ship, lead a platoon. They are doing their part. And each of us must
do ours.
So this weekend, as we commemorate Memorial Day, I ask you to hold all our fallen heroes in your hearts.
And every day, let us work together to preserve what their sacrifices
achieved – to make our country even stronger, even more fair, even more
free. That is our mission. It is our obligation. And it is our
privilege, as the heirs of those who came before us, and as citizens of
the United States of America.
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. Please be seated.
It is a great honor to return to the National Defense
University. Here, at Fort McNair, Americans have served in uniform
since 1791 -- standing guard in the earliest days of the Republic, and
contemplating the future of warfare here in the 21st century.
For over two centuries, the United States has been bound
together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and
served as our compass through every type of change. Matters of war and
peace are no different. Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but
having fought for our independence, we know a price must be paid for
freedom. From the Civil War to our struggle against fascism, on through
the long twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed
and technology has evolved. But our commitment to constitutional
principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end.
With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of
democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived
here at home. And for a moment, it seemed the 21st century would be a
tranquil time. And then, on September 11, 2001, we were shaken out of
complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire and metal
and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind
of war. No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the
principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many
civilians as they could.
And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war
for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What is clear
is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted
our focus and began a new war in Iraq. And this carried significant
consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world,
and -- to this day -- our interests in a vital region.
Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses -- hardening
targets, tightening transportation security, giving law enforcement new
tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused
inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult
questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in
security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we
compromised our basic values -- by using torture to interrogate our
enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule
of law.
So after I took office, we stepped up the war against al
Qaeda but we also sought to change its course. We relentlessly targeted
al Qaeda’s leadership. We ended the war in Iraq, and brought nearly
150,000 troops home. We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan, and
increased our training of Afghan forces. We unequivocally banned
torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our
policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with
Congress.
Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top
lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United
States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in
harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come
home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world.
In sum, we are safer because of our efforts.
Now, make no mistake, our nation is still threatened by
terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded
of that truth. But we have to recognize that the threat has shifted and
evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11. With a decade of
experience now to draw from, this is the moment to ask ourselves hard
questions -- about the nature of today’s threats and how we should
confront them.
And these questions matter to every American.
For over the last decade, our nation has spent well over a
trillion dollars on war, helping to explode our deficits and
constraining our ability to nation-build here at home. Our
servicemembers and their families have sacrificed far more on our
behalf. Nearly 7,000 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice. Many
more have left a part of themselves on the battlefield, or brought the
shadows of battle back home. From our use of drones to the detention of
terrorist suspects, the decisions that we are making now will define
the type of nation -- and world -- that we leave to our children.
So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature
and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be
mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its
freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any
President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase
the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out
every danger to our open society. But what we can do -- what we must do
-- is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us, and make it
less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all the while maintaining
the freedoms and ideals that we defend. And to define that strategy,
we have to make decisions based not on fear, but on hard-earned wisdom.
That begins with understanding the current threat that we face.
Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is
on the path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time
thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not
direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They’ve not carried out a
successful attack on our homeland since 9/11.
Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al
Qaeda affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the
threat today is more diffuse, with Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the Arabian
Peninsula -- AQAP -- the most active in plotting against our homeland.
And while none of AQAP’s efforts approach the scale of 9/11, they have
continued to plot acts of terror, like the attempt to blow up an
airplane on Christmas Day in 2009.
Unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to
gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria. But here, too, there
are differences from 9/11. In some cases, we continue to confront
state-sponsored networks like Hezbollah that engage in acts of terror to
achieve political goals. Other of these groups are simply collections
of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. And
while we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a
transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and
regions where they are based. And that means we'll face more localized
threats like what we saw in Benghazi, or the BP oil facility in
Algeria, in which local operatives -- perhaps in loose affiliation with
regional networks -- launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats,
companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other
criminal enterprises to fund their operations.
And finally, we face a real threat from radicalized
individuals here in the United States.
Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh
Temple in Wisconsin, a plane flying into a building in Texas, or the
extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, America has confronted many forms of violent extremism in our
history. Deranged or alienated individuals -- often U.S. citizens or
legal residents -- can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by
larger notions of violent jihad. And that pull towards extremism
appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood and the bombing of the
Boston Marathon.
So that’s the current threat -- lethal yet less capable al
Qaeda affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses
abroad; homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We have
to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront
them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale
of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before
9/11.
In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our
Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship
at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on a Pan Am flight -- Flight 103 --
over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the
World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at
our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all brutal; they were all
deadly; and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But
if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise
to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.
Moreover, we have to recognize that these threats don’t
arise in a vacuum. Most, though not all, of the terrorism we faced is
fueled by a common ideology -- a belief by some extremists that Islam is
in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence
against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of
a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the
United States is not at war with Islam. And this ideology is rejected
by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of
terrorist attacks.
Nevertheless, this ideology persists, and in an age when
ideas and images can travel the globe in an instant, our response to
terrorism can’t depend on military or law enforcement alone. We need all
elements of national power to win a battle of wills, a battle of
ideas. So what I want to discuss here today is the components of such a
comprehensive counterterrorism strategy.
First, we must finish the work of defeating al Qaeda and its associated forces.
In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan
responsibility for that country’s security. Our troops will come home.
Our combat mission will come to an end. And we will work with the
Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a
counterterrorism force, which ensures that al Qaeda can never again
establish a safe haven to launch attacks against us or our allies.
Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a
boundless “global war on terror,” but rather as a series of persistent,
targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists
that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships
with other countries. Already, thousands of Pakistani soldiers have
lost their lives fighting extremists. In Yemen, we are supporting
security forces that have reclaimed territory from AQAP. In Somalia, we
helped a coalition of African nations push al-Shabaab out of its
strongholds. In Mali, we’re providing military aid to French-led
intervention to push back al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and help the people
of Mali reclaim their future.
Much of our best counterterrorism cooperation results in
the gathering and sharing of intelligence, the arrest and prosecution of
terrorists. And that’s how a Somali terrorist apprehended off the
coast of Yemen is now in a prison in New York. That’s how we worked
with European allies to disrupt plots from Denmark to Germany to the
United Kingdom. That’s how intelligence collected with Saudi Arabia
helped us stop a cargo plane from being blown up over the Atlantic.
These partnerships work.
But despite our strong preference for the detention and
prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed. Al
Qaeda and its affiliates try to gain foothold in some of the most
distant and unforgiving places on Earth. They take refuge in remote
tribal regions. They hide in caves and walled compounds. They train in
empty deserts and rugged mountains.
In some of these places -- such as parts of Somalia and
Yemen -- the state only has the most tenuous reach into the territory.
In other cases, the state lacks the capacity or will to take action.
And it’s also not possible for America to simply deploy a team of
Special Forces to capture every terrorist. Even when such an approach
may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to
our troops and local civilians -- where a terrorist compound cannot be
breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal
communities, for example, that pose no threat to us; times when putting
U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis.
To put it another way, our operation in Pakistan against
Osama bin Laden cannot be the norm. The risks in that case were
immense. The likelihood of capture, although that was our preference,
was remote given the certainty that our folks would confront
resistance. The fact that we did not find ourselves confronted with
civilian casualties, or embroiled in an extended firefight, was a
testament to the meticulous planning and professionalism of our Special
Forces, but it also depended on some luck. And it was supported by
massive infrastructure in Afghanistan.
And even then, the cost to our relationship with Pakistan
-- and the backlash among the Pakistani public over encroachment on
their territory -- was so severe that we are just now beginning to
rebuild this important partnership.
So it is in this context that the United States has taken
lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces,
including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as
drones.
As was true in previous armed conflicts, this new
technology raises profound questions -- about who is targeted, and why;
about civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about
the legality of such strikes under U.S. and international law; about
accountability and morality. So let me address these questions.
To begin with, our actions are effective. Don’t take my
word for it. In the intelligence gathered at bin Laden’s compound, we
found that he wrote, “We could lose the reserves to enemy’s air
strikes. We cannot fight air strikes with explosives.” Other
communications from al Qaeda operatives confirm this as well. Dozens of
highly skilled al Qaeda commanders, trainers, bomb makers and
operatives have been taken off the battlefield. Plots have been
disrupted that would have targeted international aviation, U.S. transit
systems, European cities and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put,
these strikes have saved lives.
Moreover, America’s actions are legal. We were attacked
on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of
force. Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is
at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are
at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans
as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war -- a
war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.
And yet, as our fight enters a new phase, America’s
legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion.
To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it
is wise or moral in every instance. For the same human progress that
gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the
discipline to constrain that power -- or risk abusing it. And that’s
why, over the last four years, my administration has worked vigorously
to establish a framework that governs our use of force against
terrorists –- insisting upon clear guidelines, oversight and
accountability that is now codified in Presidential Policy Guidance that
I signed yesterday.
In the Afghan war theater, we must -- and will -- continue
to support our troops until the transition is complete at the end of
2014. And that means we will continue to take strikes against high
value al Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to
support attacks on coalition forces. But by the end of 2014, we will no
longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we’ve
made against core al Qaeda will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.
Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al Qaeda and its
associated forces. And even then, the use of drones is heavily
constrained. America does not take strikes when we have the ability to
capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain,
interrogate, and prosecute. America cannot take strikes wherever we
choose; our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and
respect for state sovereignty.
America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we
act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the
American people, and when there are no other governments capable of
effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken,
there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured
-- the highest standard we can set.
Now, this last point is critical, because much of the
criticism about drone strikes -- both here at home and abroad --
understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There’s a
wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental
reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have
resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And
for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can
justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, those
deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the
civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these
heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the
face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties -- not
just in our cities at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the
very places like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a
foothold. Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians,
and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs
any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes. So doing
nothing is not an option.
Where foreign governments cannot or will not effectively
stop terrorism in their territory, the primary alternative to targeted
lethal action would be the use of conventional military options. As
I’ve already said, even small special operations carry enormous risks.
Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and
are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local outrage.
And invasions of these territories lead us to be viewed as occupying
armies, unleash a torrent of unintended consequences, are difficult to
contain, result in large numbers of civilian casualties and ultimately
empower those who thrive on violent conflict.
So it is false to assert that putting boots on the ground
is less likely to result in civilian deaths or less likely to create
enemies in the Muslim world. The results would be more U.S. deaths,
more Black Hawks down, more confrontations with local populations, and
an inevitable mission creep in support of such raids that could easily
escalate into new wars.
Yes, the conflict with al Qaeda, like all armed conflict,
invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who
want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the
course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.
Our efforts must be measured against the history of
putting American troops in dist
ant lands among hostile populations. In
Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of civilians died in a war where the
boundaries of battle were blurred. In Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the
extraordinary courage and discipline of our troops, thousands of
civilians have been killed. So neither conventional military action nor
waiting for attacks to occur offers moral safe harbor, and neither does
a sole reliance on law enforcement in territories that have no
functioning police or security services -- and indeed, have no
functioning law.
Now, this is not to say that the risks are not real. Any
U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more enemies and
impacts public opinion overseas. Moreover, our laws constrain the power
of the President even during wartime, and I have taken an oath to
defend the Constitution of the United States. The very precision of
drone strikes and the necessary secrecy often involved in such actions
can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a
troop deployment invites. It can also lead a President and his team to
view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.
And for this reason, I’ve insisted on strong oversight of
all lethal action. After I took office, my administration began
briefing all strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan to the appropriate
committees of Congress. Let me repeat that: Not only did Congress
authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America
takes. Every strike. That includes the one instance when we targeted
an American citizen -- Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations
for AQAP.
This week, I authorized the declassification of this
action, and the deaths of three other Americans in drone strikes, to
facilitate transparency and debate on this issue and to dismiss some of
the more outlandish claims that have been made. For the record, I do
not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and
kill any U.S. citizen -- with a drone, or with a shotgun -- without due
process, nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.
But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against
America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither
the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him
before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a
shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be
protected from a SWAT team.
That’s who Anwar Awlaki was -- he was continuously trying
to kill people. He helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive
devices on two U.S.-bound cargo planes. He was involved in planning to
blow up an airliner in 2009. When Farouk Abdulmutallab -- the Christmas
Day bomber -- went to Yemen in 2009, Awlaki hosted him, approved his
suicide operation, helped him tape a martyrdom video to be shown after
the attack, and his last instructions were to blow up the airplane when
it was over American soil. I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki
if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn’t. And
as President, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized
the strike that took him out.
Of course, the targeting of any American raises
constitutional issues that are not present in other strikes -- which is
why my administration submitted information about Awlaki to the
Department of Justice months before Awlaki was killed, and briefed the
Congress before this strike as well. But the high threshold that we’ve
set for taking lethal action applies to all potential terrorist targets,
regardless of whether or not they are American citizens. This
threshold respects the inherent dignity of every human life. Alongside
the decision to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way, the
decision to use force against individuals or groups -- even against a
sworn enemy of the United States -- is the hardest thing I do as
President. But these decisions must be made, given my responsibility to
protect the American people.
Going forward, I’ve asked my administration to review
proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that
go beyond our reporting to Congress. Each option has virtues in
theory, but poses difficulties in practice. For example, the
establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action
has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the
process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and
judicial authority. Another idea that’s been suggested -- the
establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch
-- avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into
national security decision-making, without inspiring additional public
confidence in the process. But despite these challenges, I look forward
to actively engaging Congress to explore these and other options for
increased oversight.
I believe, however, that the use of force must be seen as
part of a larger discussion we need to have about a comprehensive
counterterrorism strategy -- because for all the focus on the use of
force, force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere
that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy
that reduces the wellspring of extremism, a perpetual war -- through
drones or Special Forces or troop deployments -- will prove
self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.
So the next element of our strategy involves addressing
the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism -- from
North Africa to South Asia. As we’ve learned this past decade, this is a
vast and complex undertaking. We must be humble in our expectation
that we can quickly resolve deep-rooted problems like poverty and
sectarian hatred. Moreover, no two countries are alike, and some will
undergo chaotic change before things get better. But our security and
our values demand that we make the effort.
This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy
in places like Egypt and Tunisia and Libya -- because the peaceful
realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent
extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating
extremist elements -- because the end of a tyrant must not give way to
the tyranny of terrorism. We are actively working to promote peace
between Israelis and Palestinians -- because it is right and because
such a peace could help reshape attitudes in the region. And we must
help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage
entrepreneurship -- because American leadership has always been elevated
by our ability to connect with people’s hopes, and not simply their
fears.
And success on all these fronts requires sustained
engagement, but it will also require resources. I know that foreign aid
is one of the least popular expenditures that there is. That’s true
for Democrats and Republicans -- I’ve seen the polling -- even though it
amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget. In fact, a lot
of folks think it’s 25 percent, if you ask people on the streets. Less
than one percent -- still wildly unpopular. But foreign assistance
cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national
security. And it’s fundamental to any sensible long-term strategy to
battle extremism.
Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we
spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent. For
what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be
training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between
Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools
in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize
extremists. That has to be part of our strategy.
Moreover, America cannot carry out this work if we don’t
have diplomats serving in some very dangerous places. Over the past
decade, we have strengthened security at our embassies, and I am
implementing every recommendation of the Accountability Review Board,
which found unacceptable failures in Benghazi. I’ve called on Congress
to fully fund these efforts to bolster security and harden facilities,
improve intelligence, and facilitate a quicker response time from our
military if a crisis emerges.
But even after we take these steps, some irreducible risks
to our diplomats will remain. This is the price of being the world’s
most powerful nation, particularly as a wave of change washes over the
Arab World. And in balancing the trade4offs between security and active
diplomacy, I firmly believe that any retreat from challenging regions
will only increase the dangers that we face in the long run. And that's
why we should be grateful to those diplomats who are willing to serve.
Targeted action against terrorists, effective
partnerships, diplomatic engagement and assistance -- through such a
comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of
large-scale attacks on the homeland and mitigate threats to Americans
overseas. But as we guard against dangers from abroad, we cannot
neglect the daunting challenge of terrorism from within our borders.
As I said earlier, this threat is not new. But technology
and the Internet increase its frequency and in some cases its
lethality. Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit
themselves to a violent agenda, and learn how to kill without leaving
their home. To address this threat, two years ago my administration did
a comprehensive review and engaged with law enforcement.
And the best way to prevent violent extremism inspired by
violent jihadists is to work with the Muslim American community --
which has consistently rejected terrorism -- to identify signs of
radicalization and partner with law enforcement when an individual is
drifting towards violence. And these partnerships can only work when we
recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family.
In fact, the success of American Muslims and our determination to guard
against any encroachments on their civil liberties is the ultimate
rebuke to those who say that we’re at war with Islam.
Thwarting homegrown plots presents particular challenges
in part because of our proud commitment to civil liberties for all who
call America home. That’s why, in the years to come, we will have to
keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for
security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are. That
means reviewing the authorities of law enforcement, so we can intercept
new types of communication, but also build in privacy protections to
prevent abuse.
That means that -- even after Boston -- we do not deport
someone or throw somebody in prison in the absence of evidence. That
means putting careful constraints on the tools the government uses to
protect sensitive information, such as the state secrets doctrine. And
that means finally having a strong Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to
review those issues where our counterterrorism efforts and our values
may come into tension.
The Justice Department’s investigation of national
security leaks offers a recent example of the challenges involved in
striking the right balance between our security and our open society.
As Commander-in-Chief, I believe we must keep information secret that
protects our operations and our people in the field. To do so, we must
enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their
commitment to protect classified information. But a free press is also
essential for our democracy. That’s who we are. And I’m troubled by
the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative
journalism that holds government accountable.
Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their
jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. And that’s why
I’ve called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against
government overreach. And I’ve raised these issues with the Attorney
General, who shares my concerns. So he has agreed to review existing
Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve
reporters, and he’ll convene a group of media organizations to hear
their concerns as part of that review. And I’ve directed the Attorney
General to report back to me by July 12th.
Now, all these issues remind us that the choices we make
about war can impact -- in sometimes unintended ways -- the openness and
freedom on which our way of life depends. And that is why I intend to
engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force,
or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without
keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.
The AUMF is now nearly 12 years old. The Afghan war is
coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups
like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every
collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible
threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking, our
definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need
to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for
traditional armed conflicts between nation states.
So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American
people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.
And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our
systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue.
But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises.
That’s what our democracy demands.
And that brings me to my final topic: the detention of
terrorist suspects. I’m going to repeat one more time: As a matter of
policy, the preference of the United States is to capture terrorist
suspects. When we do detain a suspect, we interrogate them. And if the
suspect can be prosecuted, we decide whether to try him in a civilian
court or a military commission.
During the past decade, the vast majority of those
detained by our military were captured on the battlefield. In Iraq, we
turned over thousands of prisoners as we ended the war. In Afghanistan,
we have transitioned detention facilities to the Afghans, as part of
the process of restoring Afghan sovereignty. So we bring law of war
detention to an end, and we are committed to prosecuting terrorists
wherever we can.
The glaring exception to this time-tested approach is the
detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The original premise for opening
GTMO -- that detainees would not be able to challenge their detention --
was found unconstitutional five years ago. In the meantime, GTMO has
become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of
law. Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will
end up at GTMO.
During a time of budget cuts, we spend $150 million each
year to imprison 166 people -- almost $1 million per prisoner. And the
Department of Defense estimates that we must spend another $200 million
to keep GTMO open at a time when we’re cutting investments in education
and research here at home, and when the Pentagon is struggling with
sequester and budget cuts.
As President, I have tried to close GTMO. I transferred
67 detainees to other countries before Congress imposed restrictions to
effectively prevent us from either transferring detainees to other
countries or imprisoning them here in the United States.
These restrictions make no sense. After all, under
President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from GTMO with
Congress’s support. When I ran for President the first time, John
McCain supported closing GTMO -- this was a bipartisan issue. No person
has ever escaped one of our super-max or military prisons here in the
United States -- ever. Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for
terrorism or terrorism-related offenses, including some folks who are
more dangerous than most GTMO detainees. They're in our prisons.
And given my administration’s relentless pursuit of al
Qaeda’s leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for
Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should have never
have been opened. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Excuse me, President Obama --
THE PRESIDENT: So -- let me finish, ma'am. So today, once again --
AUDIENCE MEMBER: There are 102 people on a hunger strike. These are desperate people.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm about to address it, ma'am, but you've got to let me speak. I'm about to address it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You're our Commander-In-Chief --
THE PRESIDENT: Let me address it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- you an close Guantanamo Bay.
THE PRESIDENT: Why don’t you let me address it, ma'am.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: There’s still prisoners --
THE PRESIDENT: Why don’t you sit down and I will tell you exactly what I'm going to do.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: That includes 57 Yemenis.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. (Applause.) Ma'am, thank you. You should let me finish my sentence.
Today, I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from GTMO. (Applause.)
I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site
in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I’m
appointing a new senior envoy at the State Department and Defense
Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of
detainees to third countries.
I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen
so we can review them on a case-by-case basis. To the greatest extent
possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to
other countries.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- prisoners already. Release them today.
THE PRESIDENT: Where appropriate, we will bring
terrorists to justice in our courts and our military justice system.
And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It needs to be --
THE PRESIDENT: Now, ma'am, let me finish. Let me finish,
ma'am. Part of free speech is you being able to speak, but also, you
listening and me being able to speak. (Applause.)
Now, even after we take these steps one issue will remain
-- just how to deal with those GTMO detainees who we know have
participated in dangerous plots or attacks but who cannot be prosecuted,
for example, because the evidence against them has been compromised or
is inadmissible in a court of law. But once we commit to a process of
closing GTMO, I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved,
consistent with our commitment to the rule of law.
I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a
harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those
of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future -- 10 years from now or 20
years from now -- when the United States of America is still holding
people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is
not part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are
force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike. I'm
willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it's
worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something
our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our
children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.
We have prosecuted scores of terrorists in our courts.
That includes Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up an
airplane over Detroit; and Faisal Shahzad, who put a car bomb in Times
Square. It's in a court of law that we will try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who
is accused of bombing the Boston Marathon. Richard Reid, the shoe
bomber, is, as we speak, serving a life sentence in a maximum security
prison here in the United States. In sentencing Reid, Judge William
Young told him, “The way we treat you…is the measure of our own
liberties.”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How about Abdulmutallab -- locking up a
16-year-old -- is that the way we treat a 16-year old? (Inaudible) --
can you take the drones out of the hands of the CIA?
Can you stop the
signature strikes killing people on the basis of suspicious activities?
THE PRESIDENT: We’re addressing that, ma’am.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- thousands of Muslims that got killed
-- will you compensate the innocent families -- that will make us safer
here at home. I love my country. I love (inaudible) --
THE PRESIDENT: I think that -- and I’m going off script,
as you might expect here. (Laughter and applause.) The voice of that
woman is worth paying attention to. (Applause.) Obviously, I do not
agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn’t listening to
me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the
suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.
When that judge sentenced Mr. Reid, the shoe bomber, he
went on to point to the American flag that flew in the courtroom. “That
flag,” he said, “will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That
flag still stands for freedom.”
So, America, we’ve faced down dangers far greater than al
Qaeda. By staying true to the values of our founding, and by using our
constitutional compass, we have overcome slavery and Civil War and
fascism and communism. In just these last few years as President, I’ve
watched the American people bounce back from painful recession, mass
shootings, natural disasters like the recent tornados that devastated
Oklahoma. These events were heartbreaking; they shook our communities
to the core. But because of the resilience of the American people,
these events could not come close to breaking us.
I think of Lauren Manning, the 9/11 survivor who had
severe burns over 80 percent of her body, who said, “That’s my reality. I
put a Band-Aid on it, literally, and I move on.”
I think of the New Yorkers who filled Times Square the day after an attempted car bomb as if nothing had happened.
I think of the proud Pakistani parents who, after their
daughter was invited to the White House, wrote to us, “We have raised an
American Muslim daughter to dream big and never give up because it does
pay off.”
I think of all the wounded warriors rebuilding their lives, and helping other vets to find jobs.
I think of the runner planning to do the 2014 Boston
Marathon, who said, “Next year, you’re going to have more people than
ever. Determination is not something to be messed with.”
That’s who the American people are -- determined, and not
to be messed with. And now we need a strategy and a politics that
reflects this resilient spirit.
Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a
surrender ceremony at a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the
ground. Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to
school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a
veteran starting a business; a bustling city street; a citizen shouting
her concerns at a President.
The quiet determination; that strength of character and
bond of fellowship; that refutation of fear -- that is both our sword
and our shield. And long after the current messengers of hate have
faded from the world’s memory, alongside the brutal despots, and
deranged madmen, and ruthless demagogues who litter history -- the flag
of the United States will still wave from small-town cemeteries to
national monuments, to distant outposts abroad. And that flag will
still stand for freedom.
Thank you very, everybody. God bless you. May God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)
On May 10th, the Associated Press news agency received an email from
the US Department of Justice saying that records of more than 20 phone
lines assigned to its reporters had been secretly seized as part of an
investigation into a government leak.
The government claimed it was a matter of national security, while
the AP called it an unprecedented intrusion into its newsgathering
operations. But should the journalistic community be so surprised? With
the Obama White House’s track record on whistleblowers and WikiLeaks,
the move to spy on AP seems consistent with an administration more
committed to secrecy than ever before.
Is the United States still the land of the free for journalists and their sources? In this week's News Divide we speak to Laura Malone, legal counsel for the Associated Press; Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars; The World is a Battlefield; the investigative reporter Dana Priest of the Washington Post; and Ben Wizner from the American Civil Liberties Union.
This week’s Newsbytes: After two years in hiding, a
prominent Bahraini blogger reappears in the UK; Globovision, a leading
opposition outlet in Venezuela, is sold to businessmen allegedly
friendly with the government; and Islamabad is missing one of the most
prominent Western journalists based there - the New York Times' Declan Walsh was ordered to leave the country before the election.
One of the lesser-known consequences of the US-led 'war on terror'
has been a wave of anti-terrorism legislation in other countries. One of
them is Ethiopia. It is not a country known for its freedom of the
press and, with ongoing internal conflicts with separatist groups, and
the powers that be keeping a wary eye on the nearby Arab Spring, the
government in Addis Ababa has been cracking down on the media.
It is doing so with an anti-terror law passed in 2009, which has led
to the sentencing of 11 journalists, sent dozens of reporters into exile
and has forced countless others to practice self-censorship. The Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead reports on the law that blurs the line between journalism and terrorism.
This week has been pretty
scandal-ridden by Washington standards. In all, four different stories
are taking up all the oxygen on cable TV. Here's a quick rundown for
those who perhaps think it is more important to know what is going on in
Syria, Iraq or anywhere where lives, rather than just political
capital, are on the line.
First, the Internal Revenue Service, the
US tax collecting agency was targeting conservative political groups.
No-one is asking why political groups should be tax exempt, but
everyone involved is saying it was a very bad thing for the IRS to
specifically target right-wing groups.
The next so-called scandal
has to do with "the Benghazi talking points". The White House released
100 pages of emails, showing that the State Department, not the White
House, pushed to not reveal the fact that they had received intelligence
warnings about the security situation in the Libyan city of Benghazi
before the attack that killed four US citizens on September 11 last
year. Mention of this was left off the final version, along with any
mention of al-Qaeda. The US media is now focusing on the fact that the
change did not come from the White House, instead of asking why
officials did not want to admit that they knew about a threat in
advance. In fact, the now-released emails clearly say that the
information could "be abused by Members [of Congress] to beat the State
Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want
to feed that…?" The fact that it was a political consideration is not
the scandal: the back and forth political finger-pointing is.
The
third issue is that is taking up the US media's time and attention has
to do with umbrellas. Specifically, Barack Obama, the US President, had
Marines hold umbrellas for him and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan when it started raining during a joint press conference. That is
the complaint by some Republicans. and it has forced liberal media
outlets to order their researchers to look for any and all pictures of
former leaders having their umbrellas held.
The fourth controversy
is the one getting the least amount of attention: in the course of
investigating a national security leak, the US Justice Department
subpoenaed two months of phone records from 100 Associated Press
journalists. They didn't tell the AP until after they had done it,
meaning the respected news organisation could not ask a judge to
intervene. The Attorney General says his department's internal
regulations allow them to do that. That, in fact, is all he'll say.
Other than, "It wasn't me." I'm paraphrasing, but any attempt to ask
him questions has been met with the response that he recused himself
from the case so he knows nothing. And no-one else is talking.
These
are the "scandals" occupying everyone's time these days. So the
president is going to talk about something this week that has been less
controversial: the use of drones in targeted killings overseas. He
apparently is going to lay out more details on the internal process, to
make Americans understand what he is doing to "keep them safe". So
before he talks, I thought I should lay out what else we know about what
his administration practices.
There are a couple of
other things he might want to talk about while being as he claims "the
most transparent [US] president in history".
Here is my likely
incomplete list of some of the things the government is now allowed to
do, essentially because they say they can.
Indefinitely detain Americans: The president said he wouldn't use this authority, but his lawyers are fighting in court to keep the ability.
'Sneak and Peek': It
may sound like a child’s game, but what it means is that government
agents can sneak into your house or business without your knowledge,
look around take pictures, replace things and they don’t have to tell
you until after you are arrested. It’s believed that these searches are
happening mostly in cases that don’t involve terrorism.
Secret warrants: There
is a special court that officials can go to and ask for warrants for
surveillance inside the US in "terrorism" cases. No one knows who they
are targeting but the court very rarely says no to any application.
'National Security letters': Tens
of thousands of these letters have been sent demanding companies give
the government records on their clients and the companies can’t tell
anyone, they just have to give up your information.
Electronic eavesdropping: The
government is reportedly trying to come up with a system that would
force electronic communications companies to create a backdoor so the
government can listen to internet phone calls.
These are just the
things that we know about. What else is the government doing? It may
be much harder now to find out. The Obama administration's intense
targeting of "leakers" will likely mean sources are going to be less
likely to talk about what they know. Would you call the AP with
information right now, given the seizure of their phone records?
So what happens next?
When
it comes to drones, Congress would have to force the president to stop
because according to the administration's legal memos, they believe this
right is based on the law passed after September 11, 2001, authorising
the use of force. That authorisation does not have an end date, and is
not limited to a certain country.
The courts have, for the most
part, sided with the administration on all cases involving civil
liberties, but several lawsuits are pending that could force the
government to curtail what it is doing - eventually.
Alternately,
the people of the United States could get involved and demand that
their rights be protected. It is not, however, an issue that most know
about, given that it isn't a big "scandal". The media has not focused on
what civil rights groups describe as shocking and illegal behavior.
They're busy: it rained and the President was getting wet.
WASHINGTON -- Progressive and labor groups on Thursday renewed calls
for Senate leaders to reform filibuster rules that have allowed
Republicans to repeatedly stonewall presidential nominees and
legislation, including gun control.
Fix the Senate Now, a coalition of more than 70 progressive and labor
organizations sent a letter to Senate leaders focusing on judicial
vacancies. Republicans have repeatedly used filibusters to block
President Barack Obama's judicial nominees. The coalition's letter urges
Senate leaders to change rules requiring 60 votes to break a
filibuster.
"There are over 30 more vacancies now than when President Obama took
office, dozens of which are classified as 'judicial emergencies,'" the
letter reads.
The White House recently withdrew its nomination
of former New York state Solicitor General Caitlin Halligan to serve on
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, after several attempts
to confirm her were filibustered by Republicans.
The letter also mentions filibusters to block nominees for leadership
positions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Environmental
Protection Agency and Department of the Interior.
"The abuse of the filibuster to undermine policies that the minority
cannot defeat through normal legislative channels represents a
subversion of core democratic principles and Senate traditions, and
should not continue," the letter states.
The coalition also launched a petition drive "to restore fairness and honor to the nomination and confirmation process for executive and judicial nominations."
The Senate cut a modest filibuster reform deal
in January, which preserved the 60-vote threshold. Since then,
Republicans have continued to use the filibuster to block critical
nominations sought by Obama, as well as major legislation.
The president made a direct appeal
to Republicans in a private meeting last month to stop filibustering
his judicial nominees. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened to change the rules by a simple majority vote if judicial nominees don't start moving through the Senate.
Republicans also mounted unprecedented filibusters against Chuck
Hagel for defense secretary, and John Brennan for CIA director. Both
were later confirmed, but with drama and delay. Republicans also used
the filibuster to defeat legislation that would have staved off the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration for a period of 10 months.
Last week, a measure to expand background checks for gun purchases
failed to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to become law, despite
support from 90 percent of Americans. Only four Republicans voted in its
favor, leading many
to bemoan the Senate's rules. An additional eight amendments related to
gun violence, proposed by both Democrats and Republicans, also fell
short of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
May 17, 2013
Hi, everybody. Over the past few months, I’ve laid out a
series of commonsense ideas to reignite the true engine of our economic
growth: a rising, thriving middle class.
The way I see it, there are three areas where we need to
focus. One: making America a magnet for good jobs. Two: making sure
our workers have the education and skills they need to do those jobs.
And three: making sure your hard work leads to a decent living.
I’ve also been visiting cities across the country that are doing some interesting and creative things along these lines.
On Friday, I stopped by a factory in Baltimore that’s creating good jobs here at home by exporting digging equipment abroad.
I read with young kids in a pre-K program, where kids are
getting a head start learning the skills they’ll need to succeed in
life.
And I stopped by a program that’s helping folks in tough
circumstances – especially low-income dads – get the training and
guidance they need to find work and support their families.
That’s why I like getting out of the Washington echo
chamber whenever I can – because too often, our politics aren’t focused
on the same things you are. Working hard. Supporting your family and
your community. Making sure your kids have every chance in life.
More than anything, the American people make me optimistic
about where we’re headed as a nation. Especially after all we’ve been
through the past several years. And that should encourage us to work
even harder on the issues that matter to you.
In a little over three years, our businesses have created
more than 6.5 million new jobs. And while our unemployment rate is
still too high, it’s the lowest it’s been since 2008. But now we need
to create even more good, middle-class jobs, and we need to do it
faster.
Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs. But now we need to get middle-class wages and incomes rising too.
Our housing market is healing. But we still need to help a
lot more families stay in their homes, or refinance to take advantage
of historically low rates.
And our deficits are shrinking at the fastest rate in
decades. But now we need to budget in a smarter way that doesn’t hurt
middle-class families or harm critical investments in our future.
So in a lot of sectors, things are looking up. The
American auto industry is thriving. American energy is booming. And
American ingenuity in our tech sector has the potential to change the
way we do almost everything.
In the coming weeks, I’m going to visit more cities like
Baltimore, and Austin, Texas – where I was two weeks ago; places where
Americans are coming together to strengthen their own communities and
economies – and in the process, making this country better for all of
us.
And I’m going to keep trying to work with both parties in
Washington to make progress on your priorities. Because I know that if
we come together around creating more jobs, educating more of our kids,
and building new ladders of opportunity for everyone who’s willing to
climb them – we’ll all prosper, together.
If you’ve been watching any commercial television lately, you are
well aware that the financial services industry is very busy running
expensive ads imploring us to worry about our retirement futures. Open a
new account today, they say.
They are not wrong that we should be doing something: America is
facing a retirement crisis. One in three Americans has no retirement
savings at all. One in two reports that they can’t save enough. On top
of that, we are living longer, and health care costs, as we all know,
are increasing.
But, as I found when investigating the retirement planning and mutual funds industries in The Retirement Gamble,
which airs tonight on FRONTLINE, those advertisements are imploring us
to start saving for one simple reason. Retirement is big business — and
very profitable. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the more we
save into the industry’s financial products, the more money they make
in fees and commissions trading our hard-earned cash. And as long as
they don’t run away with our money or invest it in a Ponzi scheme, they
have little in the way of accountability to us when something goes
wrong. And even then it can be hard to fight back.
Big banks, brokerages, insurance companies and other financial
service providers operate under something called a suitability standard —
which says they don’t have to give you the best advice, just advice
that isn’t too egregiously terrible.
Let’s say you sit down with an adviser at your brokerage or bank and
ask for some advice on how you should allocate your retirement savings,
or which funds you might want to choose for your IRA.
You’ll get lots of advice, but chances are it won’t be worth much.
Eighty five percent of all financial advisers and financial planners are
really just brokers or salesman. Their incentive is to sell you a
product that makes them a higher commission, not necessarily a product
that maximizes your chances of saving more. Only 15 percent of advisers
are “fiduciaries” — advisers who by law must operate with your best
interests in mind.
Last year, the Obama administration proposed a rule to mandate that
all financial advisers, financial planners and other assorted financial
wizards would have to adopt a fiduciary standard when it came to
employee retirement accounts such as your 401(k) or IRA account. The
financial services industry, which today manages something upwards of
$10 trillion of our retirement nest eggs, thought this was a bad idea
and pushed back hard. Scores of their protest letters poured into the
U.S. Labor Department, the branch of our government responsible for
regulating employee retirement accounts.
“As long as they don’t run away with our money or invest it in a Ponzi
scheme, they have little in the way of accountability to us when
something goes wrong. And even then it can be hard to fight back.”
Congress, too, was hit with a furious lobbying campaign. This would
be way too expensive, the industry said; if we have to provide such a
standard of service, we will either have to pack up and find another
business line, or have to pass the increased costs on to our customers.
The Obama administration pulled their proposal last fall.
How would a new fiduciary rule change things? Chances are you would
be sold less expensive products, not only in your IRA accounts but
inside your company 401(k) as well. It’s all about fees. While reporting
on retirement plans for FRONTLINE, nothing has been more surprising to
me than the corrosive effect of fees on our retirement savings.
It’s this simple: Fund fees can erode as much as half or more of your prospective gains.
For the sake of dramatizing the point, John Bogle, founder of
Vanguard, the world’s largest mutual fund company and pioneer of
low-cost index funds, gave me a startling example while we were filming.
Assume you are invested in a mutual fund, he says, with a gross return
of 7 percent, but that the mutual fund charges you an annual fee of 2
percent.
Over a 50-year investing lifetime, that little 2 percent fee will
erode 63 percent of what you would have had. As Bogle puts it, “the
tyranny of compounding costs” is overwhelming.
In short, fees matter. So what can you do? You aren’t going to find a
fund that invests your money for free, but experts say you can come
close by buying index funds. Their fees can be a tenth of what the
average mutual funds charges. And over time, in bull and bear markets,
on average, index funds perform better than their more expensive
actively managed fund cousins. This is no secret to anyone who is paying
attention.
So why aren’t our trusted financial advisers and those ads telling us
to buy index funds? Why do some 401(k) plans not even offer them on
their menus?
It’s because even though an index fund might be a better option for
you and me, a broker operating under a suitability standard has no
incentive to sell it to us. He or she will make higher commissions from
options that have higher fees.
Sadly, a recent AARP study reported that 70 percent of mutual fund
savers were not even aware that they were paying any fees at all.
Is there hope for change? The Labor Department says they plan to
reintroduce a new fiduciary rule this summer that will force the
financial services industry to think of us first when it comes to
retirement. We’ll see how that goes.
In the meantime, The Retirement Gamble airs tonight (check your local listings here). What I uncovered while making this documentary made me rethink my financial future. It just might do the same for you.
If I told you that government officials possessed ironclad proof that
an imminent threat to this nation had the capacity to create a 9/11′s
worth of injuries and deaths every year at an annual economic cost of a
quarter trillion dollars, ask yourself: Would you say we should do
something about it?
I’m guessing you would. Out of a basic sense
of patriotism, you would probably at minimum support some new security
regulations and investments in enforcing those regulations, even if that
meant paying slightly higher taxes. After all, you profess to love
America, and that’s the least we should do in the face of such a threat
to our country, right?
Now ask yourself: Would your response to
the original query change if you discovered that the threat at hand was
not from a terrorist, but from unsafe workplaces — and that because of
that unaddressed problem, these casualties and costs have already become
a fact of life in America? Come on, admit it — your response probably
would change. Yes, many who would reflexively support more regulations
and enforcement in the face of a foreign terrorist threat would suddenly
scoff at more regulations and enforcement in the face of unsafe
workplaces. Why the double standard?
That’s the troubling question
raised by the reaction — or, really, lack thereof — to last month’s
catastrophic explosion in West, Texas.
Occurring in the heart of a
nation whose government data documents 4,500 workplace deaths every
year at a cost of $250 billion, the deadly blast originated at a
fertilizer plant that had not been inspected by the chronically
underfunded Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985.
The
location of the plant is particularly significant. As the New York
Times reports, Texas promotes an “antipathy toward regulations” as “the
only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’
compensation coverage” and a place where many counties “cite the lack of
local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.”
As a
result, Texas is not the nation’s most populous state but nonetheless
sports “the nation’s highest number of workplace fatalities.” When it
comes to industrial disasters, the Times notes that Texas has only about
a quarter more “high risk” sites than the state (Illinois) with the
second most number of such facilities. However, it has, according to the
Times, “more than three times the number of accidents, four times the
number of injuries and deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs”
as that state.
If
all this data was about a terrorist threat, the reaction would be swift
— negligent federal agencies would be roundly criticized and the
specific state’s lax attitude toward security would be lambasted. Yet,
after the fertilizer plant explosion, there has been no proactive
reaction at all, other than Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry boasting
about his state’s “comfort with the amount of oversight” that already
exists.
So, again, why the discrepancy? Simply put, because this
is what now passes for acceptable in a deregulated economy whose laws
are written by corporate interests.
Those interests are hostile to
safety regulation and enforcement because they don’t want to spend even
a tiny bit more on making worksites secure for employees. So they, and
the politicians whose campaigns they fund, have made an epithet out of
the word “regulation” in order to guarantee that almost nobody asks
whether we have to tolerate 4,500 dead American workers each year.
We
don’t have to tolerate that level of workplace carnage, of course.
There are many obvious and constructive things we could do, starting
with adding resources to regulatory agencies and beefing up workplace
enforcement. But if even a blast as big as the one in West, Texas,
cannot make us realize that simple fact, then nothing will.
A four-part series that gives a rare insight into the country on the move, with history in tow.
After centuries of western dominance, the world’s centre of economic and political weight is shifting eastward.
In just 30 years, China has risen from long-standing poverty to being
the second largest economy in the world – faster than any other country
in history.
From angry farmers to weary migrant workers, powerful politicians and
everyone in between, what China says and does, has become of undeniable
importance to the entire world.
Although no other country in history has risen so quickly from
poverty to prosperity as China has, for many in the world's most
populous nation, those advances have come at a price.
The economic reforms that made the People's Republic's rise possible
have also led to a harshly divided China. Divisions whose impacts could
easily spread from disenfranchised indviduals to threaten the economic
growth contemporary Chinese society has come to be based upon.
In the opening episode of this four-part series, we tell the stories
behind these divisions, from the rising urban middle class to
impoverished rural areas and the precarious existence of hundreds of
millions of migrant workers on the fringes of some of the world's
fastest growing cities.
Episode 2 - Power and the People
From the ruling Communist Party to filmmakers and bloggers, more and more people in China are looking to get their voices heard.
As blogs look to exploit their political potential and grassroots
protests and mass incidents continue to increase in numbers, we analyse
how the country run and how do the people get their say.
In this episode of China Rising , we look at how the people of one of the world's most powerful, yet closed states, manage to reach the masses.
We interview authors who struggle with censorship and
self-censorship, and examine the country's thriving film industry, which
seeks to top Hollywood.
Remarks of President Barack ObamaWeekly AddressThe White HouseMay 11, 2013
Hi, everybody. Our top priority as a nation is reigniting the true
engine of our economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class. And
few things define what it is to be middle class in America more than
owning your own cornerstone of the American Dream: a home.
Today, seven years after the real estate bubble burst, triggering the
worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and costing millions
of responsible Americans their jobs and their homes, our housing market
is healing. Sales are up. Foreclosures are down. Construction is
expanding. And thanks to rising home prices over the past year, 1.7
million more families have been able to come up for air, because they’re
no longer underwater on their mortgages.
From the day I took office, I’ve made it a priority to help
responsible homeowners and prevent the kind of recklessness that helped
cause this crisis in the first place.
My housing plan has already helped more than two million people
refinance their mortgages, and they’re saving an average of $3000 per
year.
My new consumer watchdog agency is moving forward on protections like
a simpler, shorter mortgage form that will help to keep hard-working
families from getting ripped off.
But we’ve got more work to do. We’ve got more responsible homeowners
to help – folks who have never missed a mortgage payment, but aren’t
allowed to refinance; working families who have done everything right,
but still owe more on their homes than they’re worth.
Last week, I nominated a man named Mel Watt to take on these
challenges as the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Mel’s
represented the people of North Carolina in Congress for 20 years, and
in that time, he helped lead efforts to put in place rules of the road
that protect consumers from dishonest mortgage lenders, and give
responsible Americans the chance to own their own home. He’s the right
person for the job, and that’s why Congress should do its job, and
confirm him without delay.
And they shouldn’t stop there. As I said before, more than two
million Americans have already refinanced at today’s low rates, but we
can do a lot better than that. I’ve called on Congress to give every
responsible homeowner the chance to refinance, and with it, the
opportunity to save $3,000 a year. That’s like a $3,000 tax cut. And
if you’re one of the millions of Americans who could take advantage of
that, you should ask your representative in Congress why they won’t act
on it.
Our economy and our housing market are poised for progress – but we
could do so much more if we work together. More good jobs. Greater
security for middle-class families. A sense that your hard work is
rewarded. That’s what I’m fighting for – and that’s what I’m going to
keep fighting for as long as I hold this office.
