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March 2004

Journalist warns of the dangers of complacency in a changing world

Judith Miller

Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, warned a UNF audience recently that the American people must not become complacent about terrorism, especially bioterrorism, because no major incidents have happened on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Miller, who appeared at UNF as part of the Distinguished Voices Lecture Series, said the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should not be interpreted to mean that the threat of bioterrorism does not exist. Acknowledging that she is a pessimist when it comes to bioterrorism, Miller maintained that the United States is only at the beginning of a trend that will change the way we live.

Miller’s most recent book, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, has generated considerable discussion in the United States and abroad. Miller and two other Times reporters cooperated on the book about the recent history of biological weapons. She said they wanted to sound an alarm about the coming threat of what they term “the poor man’s hydrogen bomb.”

The book topped the Times’ best-seller list during the nation’s first anthrax attack.

Realizing what a small amount of anthrax in a few letters did, Miller speculated about what might happen if the bio-attack had been smallpox or plague, which could have been easily transmitted from one person to another. That kind of nightmare scenario prompted the Bush administration to adopt a radical shift in philosophy to endorse a pre-emptive strike and the belief that “the only good defense is a good offense,” she said.

She acknowledged that the change in philosophy is difficult for many Americans to accept because wars of prevention are not part of the heritage of this country.

The Times correspondent predicted that bioterrorism will become increasingly attractive in a world of Islamic militancy when it is so easy for “deadly germs to hook a ride from one country to another.”

New technology also makes it possible to achieve “just-in-time production of bioterrorism weapons,” which makes early detection extremely difficult, she said.
For example, she noted that experts still are unsure whether the trailers discovered in Iraq after the war were mobile labs for the production of biological weapons.

“If we don’t know a mobile production unit when we see it, how can we defend ourselves against them,” she asked.

Islamic militancy is being embraced by more people, Miller said, because corrupt politicians in Arab countries are blaming the West “rather than taking responsibility for their own messes.”

She added that the United States has indirectly fostered this growth by not putting sufficient pressure on allies in the Middle East to crack down on militant movements in their countries. She highlighted the role played by radical Islamic schools in the Arab countries and said the United States must increase pressure on allies in the region to shut down these operations.

Miller said the “legacy of Arab misrule” in Middle East countries has resulted in a lack of economic and political opportunities for many young people. As a result, these people embrace popular conspiracy theories involving the United States and other western countries.

“What will be their future if there is no work,” she said. “It is a recipe for increasing frustration and violence.”

Because of this, the journalist acknowledged that the war against terrorism also must be considered a war against poverty in those regions.

“The growing pockets of militancy will affect us if we don’t care about them,” she said. “We cannot be indifferent to their plight.”