Realistic solutions to increasing our security involve radical ideas. These ideas will be denounced as impossible, utopian, or unnecessary. But such proposals, which all have positive value apart from their importance to security, would actually work.

We are either in dire danger, or we are not. If the threat is as serious as the administration would like us to believe, than the response must be equally serious. Opposition to the following proposals can therefore be taken as either a lack of seriousness or as evidence of conflicts of interest between personal profit and real national security.

A preamble to a radical security program should eliminate the fascistic term "Homeland Security", to be replaced, perhaps, with "Domestic Security". The following proposals could be realistically implemented over the next few years. Most of them are already in place in some form, either at the local level in the United States or elsewhere.

1. Eliminate nuclear power, the single most scary terrorist target.

2. Build a world-class passenger rail system to provide redundency in our transportation networks. An attack on our aviation system would never again shut the country down.

3. Increase fuel economy standards for all vehicles, especially S.U.V.'s and passenger vans. Let's stop sending our money to the terrorists via our gasoline purchases. In addition, we should fund non-profit car-sharing schemes like City Car Share in San Francisco, which allows members to drastically reduce car usage, at least in urban areas.

4. Adopt a national energy policy that provides for alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuel production, both domestic and foreign. We should increase funding for clean, renewable sources of energy, including solar and wind power. This can be done by subsidizing local efforts to provide alternative power such as the $100 million solar bond measure recently passed in San Francisco. We should also fund programs to increase energy efficiency in all aspects of the economy, and to improve energy conservation efforts. Finally, we should move away from private energy companies and towards the sort of democratic, local public power generation represented by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD).

5. Enact universal, single-payer health insurance. This would improve public health and our ability to respond to an attack with biological weapons. The significant number of Americans who are uninsured or under-insured are particularly vulnerable, but a large outbreak would threaten even those suburbanites who vote Republican and think that they are safe in their gated enclaves.

6. Encourage Israel to withdraw immediately from the territories occupied in 1967, and support the establishment of a Palestinian state within these borders. We should work with both sides to assure the security of each state and validity of the borders.

7. End the client-state system of American empire. We must cease all funding and arming of non-democratic governments, with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt at the top of the list. After all, it should be assumed that whoever funds and arms dictatorships will be the object of resentment and reprisal from those who suffer under such regimes. We should then immediately announce a plan to provide economic development aid (not loans) for those nations and political organizations willing to democratize and observe international human rights standards.

8. Start to observe democracy and human rights standards in our own domestic and foreign policy (see the Amnesty International report on human rights in the United States). This will improve the sort of good will necessary for international cooperation in police work. International good will toward the U.S. was prominent in the immediate aftermath of September 11th. It has been completely squandered by the Bush administration, who have succeeded in the dubious achievement of uniting most of the world against us.

You won't hear the Bush administration or the Democrats talk about these types of solutions, because they are not serious about reducing terrorism. Their primary goals are political and economic power for themselves and their clients in corporate America, who fund their campaigns. First in importance among these corporate donors are the energy companies, who help so much to put the "conflict" in "conflic of interest." Terrorism is the natural outcome of such arrangements, and is seen as worth the price.

These proposals would cost money, but probably not as much money as will be spent on useless weapons systems like "Star Wars" (not very helpful in fighting fanatics armed with box cutters) and perpetual wars involving the bombing of brown-skinned people. Needless to say, in addition to increasing our security dramatically, radical policies would have tremendous environmental and economic benefits. In the end, they would likely generate revenue and help to democratize our economy.

We know that anyone driving an S.U.V. while waving a flag is either ignorant or in serious denial concerning world politics. But how many Americans would consider the above solutions? How scared are we? How serious are we? What are we willing to give up?

When we see the opposition to the above proposals in congress, we can conclude at the very least that our problems are not technical, but political. A necessary first step to the realization of the above program would therefore be to implement real democracy in America. This would involve, among other reforms, public financing of political campaigns, as the citizens of Maine have done, and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which recently passed in San Francisco.

If terrorism is a long-term threat to the innocent citizens of the United States, and it will be as long as we continue with our imperial policies, than we should be looking at long-term solutions, not short-term bombing campaigns. Let's demonstrate a seriousness about a subject that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal refuse to take seriously. Let's admit that the only serious solutions are utopian.

Chris Siebert is a blues and jazz piano player and the bandleader for Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. He lives in San Francisco when he's not on tour in the U.S., Canada, or Japan. He can be reached at lavay@lavaysmith.com

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