The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) is a non-partisan organization that seeks to stiffen U.S. resolve to confront and defeat the ideologies that drive terrorism. After moving to FDD in late 2006, CPD developed an aggressive strategy of public education about Islamist totalitarianism.

Now implementing that strategy, CPD is focused primarily on Capitol Hill, where it sponsors events with U.S. Senators, House members, and congressional staff. Kicking off these activities, CPD sponsored a briefing and discussion for lawmakers and staff in early 2007 with Bernard Lewis, the world’s foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East.

In its educational efforts, CPD focuses on not only the threats that militant Islamism presents to the national security of the United States and its allies. The Committee also is highlighting threats to basic human rights—in particular, women’s rights, gay rights, and freedom of religion. To help drive these efforts, the Committee appointed as vice president for policy one of its members, Lawrence Haas, former communications director for Vice President Gore.

CPD has played an important role in U.S. national security debates in the past. The Committee was formed in 1950 as a bipartisan education and advocacy organization to build a national consensus behind President Truman’s policy of “containment” against Soviet expansionism. CPD then re-emerged in 1976 when its original leaders and others—including U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson—believed that Americans’ will to win the Cold War was flagging and that the United States should pursue policies to bring that conflict to a successful conclusion.

Now, CPD has returned to confront the new “present danger”: radical ideologies that have emerged from the Islamic world. In the face of this global threat, which transcends state borders and recognizes no law, complacency and ignorance are as dangerous as military weakness.

Today, CPD’s membership includes more than 100 former White House officials and Cabinet members from Republican and Democratic administrations, ambassadors, academicians, writers, and other foreign policy experts. Its co-chairmen are George Shultz, Secretary of State under President Reagan, and R. James Woolsey, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under President Clinton. U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) serve as honorary co-chairmen. CPD’s international co-chairmen are former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

CPD’s leaders and members have come together as individuals of diverse backgrounds and political persuasions to educate free people about the threat that militant Islamism poses to the United States and the Free World; to counsel against the appeasement of terrorists and the states that sponsor them; to support policies to confront this menace; and to encourage the development of civil society and democracy in regions from which the terrorists emanate.

Islamist totalitarianism, whether in its Shia or Sunni variant, seeks to curtail free speech and religion, subjugate women, eradicate homosexuals, and wage violent jihad against those who resist these goals, including the vast majority of Muslims and courageous Muslim reformers in the Middle East and elsewhere.

CPD educates the public not only about this ideology, but also about the two distinct ways that Islamist totalitarians pursue their goals. First, they use the traditional tools of terrorism: guns, explosives, and hijacked airliners. Second, they turn U.S. laws, liberties, and sensitivities against us, demanding “respect” and legal sanction for practices that threaten our security, our values, and our traditions.

In times of great challenge, Americans of all stripes have come together to defend U.S. interests. With no philosophical bent of its own, CPD reaches across political lines to work with groups and individuals that share its goal. The Committee on the Present Danger is proud to focus attention again on the present danger confronting the United States and its allies.