When the bodies of 10 of the 12 Americans who died in last Friday’s terrorist blasts at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania arrive at Andrews Air Force Base Thursday, they will be greeted by President Clinton, who will lead those present–and the entire nation–in a solemn memorial service.
Gratitude would not be an inappropriate theme. The courage of a handful of heroic American and Kenyan guards kept the truck carrying the bomb in Nairobi from driving into the embassy’s basement parking lot, where the explosion would have leveled the building and most likely killed everyone in it.
A thorough investigation needs to be launched at once of the security precautions at U.S. diplomatic posts throughout the world, even in relatively peaceful countries. In 1985, two years after the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and later the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, a panel led by retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman proposed increased fortification.
The Inman plan was only partly implemented; cost–an estimated $3 billion–was part of the reason. Congress now must revisit these recommendations, add to them whatever has been learned from the June 1996 terrorist attack against the U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia, the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and other incidents around the world, and come up with–and fund–an updated security plan.
The State Department already has announced the temporary closing of several embassies in Africa pending an investigation of security measures. A more permanent and wide-ranging solution urgently needs to be implemented.
Several factors will complicate that task. During the past two decades, the number of anti-American terrorists throughout the world has metastasized from a few ideologically driven enemies into a cancerous legion of smaller but potentially more lethal groups of fanatics, driven by twisted religious visions or simply the vengeful pleasure of killing Americans. And as the U.S. has become the only world superpower, it also has become the prime and most visible scapegoat.
But American ideals of democracy and openness–not to mention the imperatives of diplomacy–prevent us from turning our foreign missions into fortresses such as the embassy of the former Soviet Union in Havana.
The Statue of Liberty cannot be wrapped in a flak jacket and concertina wire for security’s sake. That is a compromise few Americans would be willing to make. But more needs to be done to protect Americans serving abroad in an increasingly dangerous and chaotic world.
