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Isakson: Window of Opportunity for World Peace and Liberty is Closing

MIKE KLEIN

One day after President Obama seemed to throw his administration’s intelligence team under the bus, and one day before the first-ever confirmed case of Ebola in the United States, the Senator and the Soldier sat before hundreds of people in an Atlanta ballroom and sought to bring clarity to what often seems like an out of control world.

“ISIS wants you to fear them. They want you to cower in your house and just not come outside,” Georgia U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson told 400 guests at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition meeting in Atlanta. “Since the threats have changed the way we deal with threats has changed,” said former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey (Ret.).  “Those threats will not be addressed or resolved through military means alone.”

On chance you are not familiar with this group, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition articulates the role American strength plays on the world stage, in particular, development and diplomacy, with a firm understanding that sometimes military intervention is essential first, but it must be backed up with resources that allow newly free people to create a new society. USGLC’s membership includes every living former U.S. Secretary of State and many of America’s and the world’s greatest non-governmental organizations that do hard work in the world’s worst places.

If you watched CBS “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening you saw President Obama throw his administration’s own team under the bus when he said the intelligence community “underestimated what had been taking place in Syria” with regard to ISIS, the terrorists whose murderous ways have paralyzed the Middle East and threaten world security.

If you tuned into almost any newscast Tuesday evening you heard that a West African man who traveled by plane to the United States was quarantined in a Dallas hospital after his Ebola diagnosis. In Atlanta, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried hard to assure everyone there was no anticipated danger to anyone else here.

The emergence of ISIS as a world destabilizing force and the rapid spread of Ebola from West Africa to Texas confirms again that much of what we think we control we really don’t control and often governance is reactionary. The message Senator Isakson and General Casey brought Monday to Atlanta is that the United States must remain engaged in every level of these conflicts, whether they are conflicts against forces or health care conflicts.

United States Senator Johnny Isakson, moderator Richard Warner and General George W. Casey

“We’re fighting the biggest all-time health war probably ever by the time it’s over in terms of Ebola in West Africa,” Isakson said. “The people (who are) going to West Africa now (are) not just the 3,000 military troops but it’s literally thousands of Americans … who volunteer to deliver the goods and deliver peace and deliver welfare to people who’ve been living in war-torn communities who are finally emerging from those wars.”

Casey is a retired four-star General whose command assignments included Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. “Since September 11 the international security environment and the threats to the United States have changed fundamentally and for me as an Army officer, I like to say I spent the first 30 years of a 40-year career training to fight a war I never fought and the last ten learning to fight a different war while I was fighting it.”

Today 40 percent of the world’s population is online, there are about as many cellphones in the world, 7 billion, as there are total people and the 24 x 7 rapid availability of information has created what Casey described as “a global awakening and expectations.” Yet in many parts of the world people are no freer today than when World War II ended and billions live in wretched poverty without food, clean water, toilets, health care or education.

“Our window of opportunity for peace around the world and liberty for all the people of the world is running out,” Isakson said. “The Arab world is re-producing at about 6.7 children per marriage; the West is less than two now. As we are shrinking in size the poorer countries are actually accelerating. It ends up being a numbers game. The quicker we can help bring peace and security and food and stability to poorer countries the less ISIS and people like that can recruit in these poor countries because the people are no longer just fighting for another day’s bread.”

There was a dramatic end to the discussion when General Casey noted the 13th anniversary of the 911 attack on America has just passed and then he spoke about the human toll that is sometimes too easily overlooked.

“Over 6,000 men and women have given their lives and they’ve left 20,000 surviving family members. Over 50,000 men and women have been wounded, some 10,000 of them serious enough to require long-term care,” Casey said. “Over 2 million men and women have served. Over 1 million have already left the service. A quarter of them are unemployed. We can do better than that as a country. Put these veterans back to work. You hear a lot about the problems veterans are having. If they have a job a lot of other problems get a whole lot easier.”

Learn more about the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

(Mike Klein is a journalist and media executive who has held leadership positions with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Georgia Public Broadcasting and CNN where he was Vice President of News Production. Learn more about Mike at LinkedIn.)

(Photo provided by U.S. Global Leadership Coalition)

October 1, 2014 - Posted by mikekleinonline | Uncategorized | General Casey, George W. Casey, Johnny Isakson, Mike Klein, Mike Klein Online, Senator Isakson, U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, USGLC