In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.
The arc of the American story is long, it is bumpy and uncertain, but it always bends toward a more perfect union.
No level of border security, no wall, doubling the size of the border patrol, all these things will not stop the illegal migration from countries as long as a 7-year-old is desperate enough to flee on her own and travel the entire length of Mexico because of the poverty and the violence in her country.
And so border security is not simply preventing people from getting in, but very often preventing somebody from leaving for the wrong reasons.
The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.
We have to face the fact that meaningful gun control has to be a part of homeland security.
Rhetoric that vilifies American Muslims is counter to our efforts. It's a setback to our Homeland Security efforts.
The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.
Overly simplistic suggestions that we ban people from entering this country, based on religion, or ban people from an entire region of the world is counterproductive. It will not work. We need to build bridges to communities, to American-Muslim communities right now, to encourage them to help us in our homeland security efforts.
War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children.
Immigration is the most difficult issue I've ever dealt with, and I've dealt with some tough issues: drones, gays in the military, WikiLeaks, Guantanamo. But immigration is hardest because there are so few people willing to talk and build consensus. Everybody's firmly made up their mind. It's a polarized issue.
Those of us in public office and those of us who aspire to public office have a responsibility to be reasonable, fact-based, in our rhetoric and to not suggest things that are unreasonable, to whip up a lot of emotion in public, which can lead to government overreach, fear, suspicions, and prejudice.
It is almost always the case that when someone self-radicalizes, someone close to them sees the sign, which is why we continue to encourage public awareness, public vigilance.
