Last night, Stephen Van Evera, a professor of political science at MIT, spoke about "Why the War on Terror is going badly." The lecture, sponsored by the Politics department, was held in the Shapiro Campus Center atrium.Van Evera said he believes neither U.S. citizens nor government officials are paying enough attention to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. "They aspire to major destruction of the Western economy, which I think includes destroying cities," he said. Short of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Van Evera said, Al Qaeda is the most serious threat to national security ever faced by the United States.

Middle America is not worried enough about the possibility of a terror attack, he said, adding an attack on the likely targets of New York or Washington, D.C. would affect all Americans. "Your stock portfolio is going to go down when New York disappears," he said.

He added that Americans must be prepared to experience inconveniences beyond longer airport lines if they want to truly become more secure. "This country is only slightly more secure than it was 18 months ago," he said. "They've done little to secure critical infrastructure (such as nuclear reactors and ports)."

Since September 11th, he said, many Americans have complained that their civil liberties have been threatened. Van Evera, however, said the U.S. government has not gone far enough in its efforts to secure the safety of citizens. "We have to cinch up our belts and make changes in this country," he said.

The creation of a national identity card and an American internal security organization dedicated to counter-terror based on the model of England's MI5 would be examples of productive changes, according to Van Evera. "The greatest threat to civil liberties in this country is another attack, especially ones with weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Van Evera also spoke more specifically about the threat of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is actively attempting to gain access to weapons of mass destruction, he said, adding that biological weapons are an especially dangerous threat because they can be produced without the aid of a nation-state and are relatively inexpensive. "(The Internet) has totally changed the research problem for a terrorist," he said. "We've basically made the skill set for mass murder available to pretty much everyone on the planet."

Van Evera also criticized the Bush administration in his lecture. He said some Arab newspapers have accused Mossad of destroying the World Trade Center, yet the U.S. government has not actively attempted to combat these stories. "They are not answering the charges made against the United States," he said.

He added that having intelligent, well-spoken Americans defend U.S. policy in fluent Arabic on Arab television networks such as Al Jazeera would also improve foreign perception of the United States. "This war, if it is going to be won, is not going to be won by the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines," he said. "It is going to be won by the Office of Public Diplomacy, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the State Department."

Bush, he said, "needs to give people the bad news here and tell people to suck it up." Van Evera said sacrifices, such as spending more money on fighting terrorism instead of making domestic tax cuts, must be made if we wish to win this fight. He said, however, he fears additional sacrifices will not be made until another attack occurs and tens of thousands of Americans die.