Delaware’s senior Senator Tom Carper was among members of a Senate Committee to hear testimony on the state of Homeland Security this week.
Three former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretaries testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee Monday. The committee was examining how the department has evolved since its inception following the terror attacks on 9/11—18 years ago.
The secretaries went over their lessons learned while holding the office and made recommendations to address current and future security threats.
Carper echoes the secretaries’ warning that climate change has emerged as a threat to match terrorism and cyber security.
“In some ways it poses a more imminent and grave threat to our planet and our country than the others combined,” said Carper.
The United States has been at war in Afghanistan throughout the time of DHS. Proposed negotiations between the Trump administration and Taliban to end the United States’ longest war recently fell apart. Carper says he would support talks to end the war with the Taliban, if the negotiations also include the Afghan government.
“If they won’t try to take away the rights of hundreds of thousands, and in fact a couple million, women now enjoy to go to school and not be surprised. In many cases they were not just berated, but really abused. As long as the Taliban are willing to make those kinds of assurances in negotiations with the US and they are willing to negotiate also with the Afghan government, then I think we should have those negotiations,” Carper said.
Carper also says he supports securing the southern border and decries the Trump administration’s tariff war as a response to intellectual property theft from the Chinese government.
