On Wednesday, HUMAN EVENTS Editor Jed Babbin spoke with former Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who is now running for the Republican nomination to replace retiring Sen. Evan Bayh. Here is an edited transcript of the interview.
Jed Babbin (JB): Let me just ask right up at the start: You’ve returned to normalcy. You’re now a real person. What is so urgent and so bad that an otherwise sane person like yourself would want to get back to this mad house?
Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats (DC): It’s definitely now being so frustrated and viewing out current situation as something I’ve never seen before or never felt that would happen to America. I just couldn’t stand idly by and say “Well, let somebody else address it. I’ve done my share.” I couldn’t look myself in the mirror without saying “Step in and do something...and see where we’re all going at the same time” Here I am. I’m back in the fray. I care deeply about what’s happening to our country and what legacy we’re going to leave for our children and our grandchildren. I feel a sense of responsibility to stay engaged.
JB: Let’s parse that out with you a little bit. I look at what’s going on with closing Gitmo, the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, with the way we’re handling the war in Afghanistan, the way the Pelosi-crats are at war with our intelligence community. And I have to say that I’ve never felt this worried about the future of our country.
DC: You need to add the way we’re not addressing one of the greatest threats that we face: the nuclearization/weaponization of Iran.
JB: Ok. What should we do with Iran? It seems like we’re faced with a situation now where we either do something militarily or we’re going to have to accept the fact that they’re going to have a nuclear weapon pretty soon.
DC: We didn’t need to get to this point. We could have ratcheted up diplomatic efforts, built sanctions efforts and a lot of pressure on Iran. Instead, we fool around with trying to resolve some kind of language in the United Nations that says ‘No, no. Don’t do that. (which they obviously pay no attention to). We have not put enough pressure on our allies to put pressure on Iran. We have not imposed the kind of biting sanctions that can leverage them into a position of putting the squeeze on them in terms of whether they were going to go forward with this or accept embargo gasoline supplies, embargo on shipping oil out of the country.
JB: Is it too late for that? Those are maybe things we should have done five years ago. Do we still have time to do that in your judgment?
DC: In my judgment, no. That time has passed. I was a part of an effort to put out a report during the 2008 campaign. It’s been reported by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post and given a lot of credibility in terms of outlining the steps that the new administration, whether it was John McCain’s administration or Barack Obama’s, needed to address and needed to address immediately upon taking office. And that was pushed aside and not done. They’re still fiddling around with something we didn’t even recommend: Put out an open hand and see if Iran would respond.
DC: What do we do now? I think we face up to the facts and let the American people and the world know that everybody has to eat their words. Everyone on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Atlantic, around the world, has said it is unacceptable to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. And yet, no one has gone past that point and said “If it’s unacceptable, what are we going to do?” And now it seems we’re being asked to accept the unacceptable.
And the only option now is potential military action if we’re going to stop this. The unknown factor in all of this is the situation the Israelis are in, sitting there looking at the nation that’s proclaiming it wants to eliminate that country from the face of the earth. And that’s the kind of threat that I think America has not understood.
An Iranian attack on Israel would cause chaos in the Middle East, enormous disruption of our economy, and eliminate an ally that’s stood by us through thick and thin almost when it came to second Holocaust. That is not acceptable for Israel. That cannot be acceptable for the United States. So we absolutely have to, I think at this point, very significantly ramp up the pressure against Iran. Because living with the unacceptable, accepting the unacceptable, is unacceptable...If that all makes sense.
JB: Yes, it does. It makes a lot of sense. Let me take another, maybe a little broader, issue with you. We’ve got all these things that President Obama has done pretty much full speed since he came into office. He’s ordered the closure of Gitmo. He’s banned the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. We now have the plan still in the air to try KSM et al. in the New York Federal District Court. We’ve got so many of these things going on. I want to throw at you something that your old pal Mitch McConnell told me about ten days ago when I last talked to him. He told me that the Obama administration has a sort of an ACLU mentality toward terrorists. Would you agree with him or how would you characterize it?
DC: I would characterize it as the failure of the liberal left to understand the realities of the world that we live in and the threats to the world order as well as threats to America. There’s always been this thought that we’ve taken too strong of a position. If we just open up our hands and embrace our enemies, they will see the folly of their ways and their policies. That was a theoretical position of liberals. Once they got in charge of everything, total control of the government, they tried it. And it has been the failure across the board. There was Gitmo. There was homeland defense. Whether it is dealing with adversaries that see all of this as a sign of weakness. I think that has been demonstrated in great detail for Americans to look at. And I think the understanding now is that that has been a total failure.
JB: Yesterday, another pile of previously classified documents were revealed. They were released pursuant to an FOIA lawsuit. And one of the documents is a 12 April 2007 previously top secret testimony by then-CIA director Gen. Mike Hayden to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Let me just read one little paragraph out of it and ask for your reaction. This is in regard to the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques and the liberals’ desire, back then, to limit our guys only to the Army Field manual. It says right here “Limiting our interrogation tools to those detailed in the field manual will increase the probability that a determined, resilient, high-value detainee will be able to withhold critical, time-sensitive actionable intelligence, that could prevent an immanent catastrophic attack. In essence, we would be back to a pre-9/11 posture.” That’s exactly what Mr. Obama has done. I think that’s where we are, what should we do?
DC: Well this administration is trying to re-write the rules in terms of how to protect America. And we live in the reality that there are people out there who want to kill us, want to take down our country, want to destroy our economy, and want to destroy America. That is—these are enemies. And they have to be dealt with, not through nice diplomacy, not through kowtowing to the world press, in terms of how we have to deal with this, but the reality of simply saying ‘We need to do what is appropriate and what is necessary in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening again in America. And if we take away the reasonable tools of finding out this information in the name of protecting our security, we leave ourselves open to tragic consequences that people will then, once this happens, demand to know why we treated terrorists who want to kill us as simply criminals down the street that deserve all the rights and protections of American citizens.
JB: Yeah, it just doesn’t seem to me that we ought to be treating these guys like a bunch of Rodeo Drive purse snatchers…
DC: I couldn’t agree with you more. And let me just—let me just say one more thing…
JB: Please.
DC: I think one of the things I bring to the race here is the fact that there will be no learning curve for me. This is a time of crisis, this is a time of significant interest in the United States, and my service in the armed services committee, the intelligence committee, and my involvement in a whole range of things after I left the Senate, in terms of addressing some of these issues, I think is valuable experience, in something that I’ll be able to employ, should I be elected, from the day I arrive.
JB: Let me just hit a couple of fiscal questions before I let you go. As I remember you, you’re a good fiscal conservative. As bad as this fiscal crisis is, I think the younger people will be affected more than my generation. The problem is going to be for the young guys like my sons, and their sons and daughters. We can’t afford this bunch of characters, and the debt tsunami is about to pretty much wipe out our economy. What, in your mind, are the things we need to do, and what are the big dangers and big solutions here?
DC: Well, you address the issue, although I would take a little issue with you, and I do think it’s going to affect people of your age and my age. Because the day of kind of kicking the can on down the road and passing it on to a future generation, those times have pretty much slipped away. We are now facing, I think, relatively current consequences, negative consequences to all. The debt that we’ve incurred in just the past year will have an effect over a period of time in terms of devaluation of the dollar, taking our world credit rating down, and all the consequences that come from the stagnant economy or a failing economy. All the debt and interest that we have to pay is going to affect America now as well as in the future. So I think we need to take some immediate steps.
My thoughts are that, number one, you know every time…a first-aid class always says the first thing you do is stop the bleeding. So, number one, stop the madness of this spending. And simply say ‘We’re putting everything on hold, there will be no increases, there will not be neutral grants, until we turn around and get this economy moving again.
Then, take the steps necessary to incentivize this economy, for tax reductions, for business, for simplifying our tax code, doing our tax incentives for innovation and a number of other things that get our economy moving again, and address the fiscal question, because if we can’t do that, and get that squared away, none of these other options are going to be feasible. So that’s number one.
Number two, how do you do that? I think we have to find a way to transcend stand-off partisan politics, and get some statesmen to rise up and say, you know we have one or two courses. We can continue on the current course of insolvency, or we can make the tough solutions now, and the decisions now, and present that to the American people. Now whether that’s through an outside commission, or whether that’s through the outside responsibility of leadership in Washington saying ‘this crisis is so deep and so great, it has such implications and consequences, that we have to put party differences aside to the point that we can stand up and say ‘America’s in crisis, and we have to take the necessary steps’…”
JB: Well put some stakes in the ground. Are you for one of those commissions?
DC: Yes.
JB: What about the federal debt? We’ve got Rep. Paul Ryan coming up with the alternative Republican budget. And even under his plan, we end up with the federal deficit coming to 99 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. That’s nuts.
DC: It is. No country can maintain its status in the world, maintain a vibrant economy with that kind of debt. You can’t do that if you own a home, you can’t do that if you own a business. You can’t do that if you’re running a local community or a state. And you certainly can’t do that on a national basis.
So I think some pretty drastic action has to be taken. Now one thing I would do is put it straight to Congress. After this election, if you win back the Congress, you step up and take the responsibility and set a timetable to outline a plan to immediately begin to address this. One alternative is to have a commission kick in, made up of outside people that will put something tough in place that kicks in if Congress doesn’t take that responsibility and execute it within a limited period of time.
I think it should include a whole range of things like tax reform, using tried-and-true principles of the past that John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did to get the economy moving again, there are other potential options on that. But the time is now, and the urgency is here, and there needs to be some hard deadlines, instead of just rhetoric.
JB: I agree with that entirely, but what are the stakes in the ground you’d set?
DC: Well, I think we need the buy-in of the American people, and frankly I think we’re getting it. There’s finally an understanding that unless we put everything on the table, including entitlements, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, other entitlements, we are not going to solve this problem. Because entitlements is what is driving us to that 99 percent or that 120 percent, or 160 percent of GDP in debt. So I know we’re at the point where we have to find some way of not doing business as usual, where everything gets stalemated in the Congress. Present the American people with two very clear choices: status-quo, which will run us into insolvency; or taking the sacrifice now for the future-sake of the country, the future of our children, and make the hard decisions, and entitlements must be included in that equation.
JB: Okay. I think that’s fair enough. Last quick question. The subject of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is alive and the Navy just gave notice to congress that they’re about to begin letting women serve in submarines. Seems like the era of social experimentation with the military has come upon us. What are your thoughts on that?
DC: You know, I took the lead on that when I was in the Senate. We finally worked out, had to work out a bipartisan compromise with Sen. Nunn, and we were successful in that. President Clinton signed that. And I talked to many, many military people, and they say “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” isn’t perfect, but it’s working. We clearly pointed out through thousands of pages and hours, hundreds of hours of testimony, visiting bases, talking to everybody from privates to generals, and sergeants and everybody in between. And it is clear that conclusions of that exhaustive process show that allowing gays to serve openly undermines the morale and the efficiency and competency of the small group, and the fighting groups, the ones that are on the front lines.
The first thing we should do is go back and look at all that testimony from all the experts, from all the military people, from all the outside people; I think we’ll come to the same conclusion that changing this law now - and the chiefs have just come forward and said-clearly it is going to negatively impact the ability to have efficient, effective, fighting forces, particularly today, in the threats that we face. Injecting this issue into this is just irresponsible.
JB: Senator, many thanks for being generous with your time.
DC: Well, let me just end by reinforcing the point that when I stepped down from politics, honoring my pledge to honor term-limits, I didn’t plan on getting back in until this administration came along and decided to change the America that I know and love. I could not stand by and watch this passively without getting back in and trying to do my best to do something to stop this madness and turn this country around.
