Reps: More security needed since 9/11

However much safer America has been made in the five years since 9/11, the nation still faces major threats to security and a war of unknown length.

That’s the view of Newport Beach Rep. John Campbell, who had not begun his political career at the time of the attacks but still feels irreparably changed by them.

“The answer to ‘Are we safe?’ is a very complicated one — Are we safer? Absolutely, and we’ve done many things to make us safer,” Campbell said.

There hasn’t been an attack on American soil or on an American embassy in the last five years, and that’s a sign of progress, Campbell said.

But Campbell and Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who also represents Costa Mesa, agreed that the risks to our safety haven’t gone away.

Rohrabacher said bad policies of the Clinton administration started the problems, but President Bush hasn’t improved the situation.

“We’re carrying the battle to the enemy now, but there has not been enough done to reform our intelligence system to offer the type of protection to the American people that we pay for and deserve,” Rohrabacher said.

The move in 2004 to reorganize federal intelligence agencies under a new national intelligence director just added another layer of bureaucracy, he said.

Campbell sees Iran as the biggest current threat, but it’s just part of the ongoing fight against Islamic fascists, he said — and that fight is really the legacy of Sept. 11.

“It changed me in the sense that I realized, we all should have realized, that we’re on the brink of an entirely new war, and we have to win this war just like all the last wars we’ve been in,” he said.

But it may take some time. The Cold War lasted about 40 years, Campbell pointed out.

“I’m not saying this will take 40 years, or less, or more, but it’s going to take awhile because of the nature of the enemy,” he said. “They’re not in one country. They’re all in different bits of the world.”