By Wil Shane
Lyon College News Bureau

America’s war on terrorism lacks one vital weapon, and that is creating hope for the people of Iraq and the Middle East, the former chairman of the 9/11 Commission said Wednesday in Little Rock.

Speaking at the third annual winter meeting of the Lyon College President’s Council, Thomas H. Kean, (right) the man named by President Bush to chair the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, told the audience gathered at the Arkansas Arts Center that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified that new terrorists are being created faster than they can be caught or killed.

“They have no opportunities for education or for getting good jobs,” Kean said. “They have no future. We need to create hope for them.”

Kean (pronounced “Kane”) said small liberal arts colleges like Lyon offer educations that are second to none, but graduates today are entering a new world vastly different from what has previously existed. Before, there were two superpowers in the world – the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. – but since the fall of the Soviet Union, America’s enemies live in “shadowy places” that are difficult to identify and pin down.

“I once asked Ronald Reagan what he wanted his legacy to be,” Kean said. “He pointed to man who was with him at all times.”

The man carried a briefcase, and inside it was a button to release nuclear weapons.

“Reagan said, ‘I hope my successors never have to have that man’,” Kean said.

Kean, who had a close friend die on Flight 93 and five others who perished in the World Trade Center, said the 19 terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 penetrated the defenses of the world’s most powerful nation and turned the world order “upside down.”

He said his work with the Commission revealed three things that could have prevented the attacks. First on that list is that American intelligence services should have been aware to the threat.

“There were signs as far back as February 1993 at the first attack on the World Trade Center,” Kean said.

One of the 9/11 conspirators was related to the planner of that first attack. Osama Bin Laden financed the Somalian terrorists involved in the “Blackhawk Down” incident, and he was known to have been involved in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998. He was also believed to have planned and helped to finance the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000.

Part the problem rested in the fact that American intelligence agencies such as the FBI, NSA and CIA failed to share to information with each other. To illustrate the point, he said the CIA was searching the world for two of the Cole conspirators while the FBI knew they were living in Los Angeles, and they even had credit cards and driver’s licenses in their own names.

What can be done to improve America’s image throughout a world where the nation isn’t presently well liked?

“First, we need to close Guantanamo,” Kean said. “It has a bad reputation and hurts our image in the Arab world. “And second, we need to take a greater role in the Israeli-Arab peace process.”

Kean said America’s next generation must work to achieve these objectives.

He currently serves as chairman of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, a nonprofit entity created with private funds to continue the Commission’s work of guarding against future attacks.

From 1982 – 1990, Kean served as governor of New Jersey, and for the next 15 years, he served as president of Drew University in Madison, N.J.

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