Jeh Johnson Quotes.
The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.
We are very definitely in a new phase in the global terrorist threat where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment.
It is almost always the case that when someone self-radicalizes, someone close to them sees the sign, which is why we continue to encourage public awareness, public vigilance.
There is a terrorist threat to this country that remains, and I believe that counter-terrorism needs to be the cornerstone of our mission, our vast mission… and aviation security is something that we still have a fair amount of concerns about.
The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.
The arc of the American story is long, it is bumpy and uncertain, but it always bends toward a more perfect union.
No level of border security, no wall, doubling the size of the border patrol, all these things will not stop the illegal migration from countries as long as a 7-year-old is desperate enough to flee on her own and travel the entire length of Mexico because of the poverty and the violence in her country.
Yes, it is frustrating to listen to those who foment fear, suspicion and intolerance, who don’t know the mistakes of history, and are in the midst of repeating them. Have faith that the character of the American people as a whole is such that, in the end, we will choose not to drink this brand of soiled milk.
We continually evaluate the world situation, and we not infrequently make changes to aviation security. We either step it up or we feel sometimes we’re in a position to dial it back, and so this is something that happens periodically, and people should not overreact to it or over-speculate about what’s going on.
If you build – if you spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall over, let’s say, a mountain, if you build a 10-foot wall over a 10,000-foot mountain, and someone is determined to climb the 10,000-foot mountain, they’re not going to be deterred by the 10-foot wall. It’s a matter of common sense.
President Trump talks about extreme vetting, and we actually do have extreme vetting when it comes to refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement is the most thorough, cumbersome, multilayered vetting system we have for the admission of anyone to the country.
It’s better for candidates to suggest ideas that are responsible, not ones that are incapable of being executed. People are influenced by what their leaders tell them. And bringing the level of rhetoric down brings the temperature down.
I think that the potential for homegrown terrorist attacks is something that we have to be very concerned about, because, in many respects, it’s harder to detect when you have an independent actor who may be living in our midst, in our own communities.
History will record not only the transformational changes President Obama brought about, but also that in 2008, he was elected president with 69 million votes – the largest popular vote for any one person in the history of this country, based on a campaign of hope and inspiration.
In my view, and in the view of a lot of intelligence experts, the terrorist threat that we face now has morphed significantly from the days of 9/11 to homegrown violent extremism. We have to be concerned and focused on homegrown violent extremism, countering violent extremism that exists within our borders.
I think that ISIS is a problem and it’s really a symptom of a much greater problem.
Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an ‘assassination.’
There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn’t a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.
Politics, in my judgment, has become not just the means to a policy ends, but it’s become the end itself. Politics has become the sport that we all watch, and we all pay attention to.
War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children.
