Why we have a TSA and a DHS

OPINION:

Let’s take a short break from the imbroglio over delivering paychecks to Transportation Security Administration agents and funding the Department of Homeland Security to recall why we need the agencies in the first place.

Because if you’re, say, a 22-year-old graduating from college this spring, you don’t remember a time when there were no lines at airports, no requirement for IDs, no limits on liquids, no conveyer belts for your shoes, belt and coat, and no body scanners to determine whether that’s a gun in your pocket or you’re just glad to see the TSA agent. (Sorry, I can never pass up the chance to repurpose an old Mae West line.)

Will the college senior I’m imagining at least have studied what life was like back in the good old days? Too many, I fear, spent their school days listening to lectures on intersectionality and denaturalizing gender/sexuality.

So, a little modern history: The TSA was founded not long after Sept. 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attacks ever carried out on American soil. Those attacks were executed by al Qaeda, Arabic for “the base,” implying the launching point for global jihad.

According to the terrorist group’s ideology — or, more precisely, its theology — the United States is the paramount enemy of God. It is therefore the duty of Muslims to wage holy war on Americans and, sooner or later, defeat them.

The DHS, now a sprawling bureaucracy with tens of thousands of employees, likewise was conjured into existence after al Qaeda demonstrated that the American homeland was vulnerable to coordinated, mass-casualty terrorism.

Since then, we have come to take for granted not only that we must surrender our time and dignity at airports, but also that we must spend trillions of dollars on counterterrorism.

Islamist violence has warped global energy markets as well. The Persian Gulf, through which a significant share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas transits, became a zone of danger and instability because the Islamic Republic of Iran made it so.

Energy prices now reflect not just supply and demand but also an insurance risk premium built on the fact that Iran’s rulers have decided to make the world’s oil supply an arrow in their quiver.

Similarly, the Houthis of Yemen, terrorists funded and armed by Tehran, occasionally turn the Red Sea into a shooting gallery, forcing merchant ships to reroute around Africa, adding weeks and millions of dollars to voyages that were routine when freedom of navigation — a fundamental international law — was not being violated by fanatical rebels.

Yet when Americans complain about the price of gasoline, words such as “jihad” and “mullahs” rarely arise.

Iran’s rulers have long been recognized by U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, as the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism. They have pursued a nuclear weapons capability for decades. They first took Americans hostage in 1979 and for more than 40 years have murdered Americans both directly and through proxies.

A little more modern history: Though the Islamic republic is Shiite and predominantly Persian, its founding galvanized Arab and Sunni followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that aims to reestablish an Islamic caliphate and global Islamic supremacy. From this seed, al Qaeda grew.

Iran’s rulers gave al Qaeda sanctuary after 9/11, and since at least 2023, Saif al-Adel, the current leader of al Qaeda, has been living in Tehran under the protection of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Is he still there, dead or alive? Perhaps the CIA and Mossad know.

Readers preparing to call me an “Islamophobe” should save their carbon dioxide exhalations. There are multiple interpretations of Islam, and most of the faith’s roughly 2 billion adherents believe they can be good-enough Muslims without lopping off the heads of infidels.

There also are serious Muslim thinkers, men and women of great courage, who argue that Islamism is a corruption of their faith, not its fulfillment.

Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the U.S., wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week: “The U.A.E. is a modern, progressive, prosperous Muslim society that delivers for its people. We empower women and welcome all faiths. The U.A.E. is the argument Iran can’t win, the idea it can’t accept.”

He calls for a “conclusive outcome” to the conflict now being fought against Tehran.

Iran’s rulers, who in January slaughtered tens of thousands of anti-Islamist demonstrators within its borders, probably have more sympathizers on American college campuses than in the Middle East.

Yet many Western politicians, academics and journalists refuse even to name the enemy we are fighting while pretending that energy security is one issue, airport security another, the war in the Gaza Strip a third and the conflict with Tehran a fourth.

The good news is that America’s military is formidable and Israel is a capable partner. The intelligence agencies of both countries are doing yeoman’s work. The Emiratis and the Saudis may soon contribute more directly to the collective security of the region.

That college senior I mentioned, the one who has never known an airport without body scanners, should have been taught about all this.

She should have learned that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been fighting a civilizational war since its founding in 1979. The alternative to confronting it now would be to wait till it’s stronger, likely in possession of nuclear weapons and many more missiles, including those that can deliver those nukes to American cities.

The theocrats’ claws and fangs are now being trimmed — maybe even removed. Sometime after that, the Iranian people may succeed in throwing off the clerical dictatorship.

If that happens sooner rather than later, perhaps it can be a teachable moment for next year’s graduates.

• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.