License to kill is sometimes needed

By Richard Carpenter

In his famous novels, Ian Fleming gave James bond a "license to kill." It was just one of the many actions that the Bond character was permitted, in his secret world of espionage, for the defense of his country. Wonder what Bond and his handlers would think about the current spying scandal?

I haven't been writing too much the past few months, mostly because I've been dealing with some health issues. Thankfully, I am doing much better now, and when a story like this is at hand, I just had to write about it.

At the outset, let me be very frank and honest. I couldn't care one bit about our spying on some of our so-called European friends and allies. To me it would be absurd if we didn't.

Let's take the German question first. We are such good friends now, that we should trust them completely? Well that won't work for me. The United States has had to fight Germany in two world wars in the past 95 years. My father and many of your relatives fought desperately to save our democracy in those wars.

So now you want me and our government to just "play nice," and accept their alliance unconditionally? History tells us that is a very foolish and dangerous path to follow.

The basic factors that pushed Germany towards war still exist for the most part. While they may have changed much of their militant personality as a country, the geographic and social issues that drove them to war, are very much the same.

Great Britain has for several centuries had control of most of the sea lanes in that area of the world. Much of those sea lanes and the security for them has fallen to the United States. Germany has only a few sea outlets into the North Sea. In both previous wars, this was one of the reasons they were never able to supply and defend their far flung battle grounds.

Like many of you, I actually think that Germany is probably not the threat she once was, but not me, nor anyone else in our National Security Administration, can guarantee that.

The actual word that should be used instead of spying in our vocabulary, is intelligence. Throughout time, the gathering of intelligence has been vital to the safety of any country.

There is no question that attacks like the one on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the attacks of 9/11, might have been prevented if we had had available better and more reliable intelligence.

There is no question either, that we have prevented countless new terrorist attacks, since 9/11 because we have better intelligence now.

We must also ask ourselves, if these same countries that are crying foul right now are actually engaged in the same practices themselves? Well I don't know the answer to that and neither do you. Then our path is quite clear to me. We can only feel some measure of safety, if we have a very secret and active spy organization. One that will scour the world for any and all warning signs of danger.

Not too long ago, our brave Navy Seals managed to carry out a successful mission that located and killed Osama bin Laden. That entire mission was made possible because of a very secret program conducted for years within our intelligence community. Once we located him, we sent our troops across the borders of a sovereign Pakistan, without asking permission.

Do we owe them an apology? OK, here it goes ... I'm sorry we found the worlds most despicable criminal in your country, which you had allowed to live there for several years, and that we came into your country and killed the b...............!

I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, conservative or liberal, or even a member of the Tea Party. This is not, and should not be, a political issue. It is an issue of National Security.

We live in a world that is always going to be dangerous. There will never be a time when we can relax and tell ourselves, alright we are now safe. It's been that way since the beginning of time and it will always be so.

Now you have your right to be upset, even outraged, if you want. That's what we are protecting anyway. The right to free speech, and the right to have different opinions.

My opinion is simple and is not going to change, regardless of how much the news media portrays this current so-called spy scandal in a terrible way.

In the movie "A Few Good Men," Jack Nicholson said it best ... "You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!" Hollywood has often given us more insight into this situation than just James Bond movies.

In the 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor," Robert Redford asks one of the spies at the end of the movie why they were doing these seemingly awful shady things. I will paraphrase his reply .... "When Americans need to be made safe from some bad thing, they aren't going to worry about how we do it, they are just going to say, do it!"

I think it's great that we have friends and allies around the world. I also know that every time there is real trouble, it's us they turn to for help. Guess what, we always answer the call.

So to Chancellor Merkel, I am not sorry we have been listening to your phone calls. Instead of getting mad at us, maybe it's time you thanked us for keeping you and yours safe in this dangerous world.

Like James Bond, I want our own 007's to have the ability to make us safe by any and all means possible, including your "license to kill."