Terrorists planned the attack on the USS Cole for two years.
They planned the Sept. 11 attack on New York City and Washington, D.C., for several years.
And they are planning more attacks, according to former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen who spoke at the 17th annual Bakersfield Business Conference.
“It was not just the U.S. that was attacked,” said Cohen. He said that all free minds, as free nations have been attacked.
“This is a defining moment,” he said. “We have become lax and complacent.”
Cohen, head of the Pentagon during the second term of the Clinton administration, said that America will always remember the attack.
“Many people admire the United States, many people love this country,” said Cohen. “There are also people that hate us. They hate for our openness, for our free minds, our free markets, for our tolerance, for our generosity, for our material success and our material excess.”
Cohen said that he knew participants of the conference had questions, but since no questions were allowed Cohen tried to field questions that they may have had.
“Why did that tragedy ever happen on Sept. 11? How can it have happened? Can it happen and will it happen again? What can we do to stop it?” asked Cohen. “The answer is yes. There is no doubt in my mind.”
Cohen outlined several areas that he said that the United States needs to improve upon, such as paying soldiers in the armed forces more.
“We have placed our priorities on entertainment and we haven’t placed it on the people who are preserving our way of life,” he said. “There are 18- and 19- and 20- and 21-year-olds out there in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. We don’t pay them enough, we can’t possibly pay them enough.”
He said that bombing Afghanistan isn’t the only solution, that the United States will have to engage in a long battle to root out terrorists permanently.
“We can’t bomb bin Laden and al-Queda back to the Stone Age. They are already there.”
The former defense secretary was a senator and congressman from Maine for 24 years working on the Armed Service Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Cohen has authored and co-authored several books, including three fiction novels and two books of poetry.
He said he felt that America is running out of time to decide between safety and privacy. According to Cohen, freedom is not worth much if America is not protected and that Americans have to give up some privacy for the greater good of the nation.
“More information means more intrusion. We are in the midst of a debate between freedom and protection,” Cohen said. “(The terrorists) are coming, we have to rid ourselves of indifference and complacency. We’re not unprepared, just under-prepared.”