Just when it seemed as if things could not get worse, there is even worse news from Iraq and Saudi Arabia about brutal murders of hostages, escalating violence killing hundreds including women and children, continuing revelations of abuse of prisoners by American forces or contract operative, more troop casualties, and instability throughout the region. It surely seems as if there will be no end to the depravity, bizarreness, and absurdity to the Iraq situation and to the American concept of "security."

In the midst of that, some good news to mention. Physicians for Social Responsibility recently has initiated a forward-looking program called "SMART Security." The SMART stands for "Sensible, Multilateral, American Response to Terrorism." A description of the SMART campaign is available on the PSR website (see: www.psr.org). It is a fine example of the kind of bridge-the-gap approaches which do exist but which do not receive nearly enough attention, even from within progressive movements.

Borrowing from a principle of the Hippocratic Oath that a physician should first do no harm, the SMART program states that America's national security policy must first do no harm. As the website explains: "Unfortunately, the Bush administration's go-it-alone reliance on military for security is doing more harm than good. It is likely to lead to more anger aimed against the United States--anger that might well lead to future terrorist attacks. And the administration's push for `useable' nuclear weapons and a policy of targeting other nations for nuclear first-strike attacks is leading countries like North Korea and Iran to seek their own nuclear weapons as a way of `deterring' the U.S."

The SMART program says that America is not being "smart" about security: "It's time to stop acting out of fear, and to start acting from core American values that respect life, the environment that sustains it, and the freedoms that allow for a full and healthy debate about the future of our nation."

The three-point SMART program platform includes strengthening international institutions and supporting the rule of law to prevent terror attacks, reducing the threat and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and shifting federal budget priorities such as eliminating military spending on obsolete and unnecessary weapons systems. The SMART campaign has a brochure and other website information. It is seeking endorsements and financial support.

The program is certainly a good starting point. The program does not get into a deeper exploration of fundamental questions like what "security" is in a global reality and whether any given nation can obtain "security" for itself even by dealing with or improving existing international systems.

However, the SMART program does prompt the debate about security. It also recognizes that security cannot be defined solely in tactical or strategic or military or even legal terms. For that, the program should be commended.

Moving into security issues might seem out of place and a bit "me-too"-ish for PSR. Yet it is worthwhile to know that the organization wishes to be relevant and current, and to link overriding concerns about security to its own longstanding issues such as ending nuclear weapons development, deployment, and proliferation.

What is needed now is a more comprehensive American debate on the concept of security in our very precarious reality. In that debate, the questions are not just whether America or any nation can "go it alone" or whether any nation is being "smart" about security. They are more about how security is defined, what makes a nation strong, what makes a people or a culture strong, and how not to confuse power with strength, or information with knowledge, or knowledge with wisdom, or wisdom with insight.

The questions are also about where we are going as a nation and a culture. Depending on where one goes and who one talks to, it seems that America still has a great unfulfilled potential. But what the television for a week straight, especially the vapid morning shows and the sameness of network and cable news broadcasts, and one is given to wonder if this country has any idea where it is going or what it will do when it gets there.

Surely, America is losing its claim to moral leadership in the world (even if that claim was ever legitimate after World War II), and is losing its sense of self aside from concepts of security. It is losing its legal center, and that center might spin far into orbit if military tribunals being in earnest for the 600 or more detainees at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay.

If America is not to become permanently adrift, this security debate must happen. Unfortunately, that debate is unlikely to be advanced very much in the Presidential election, with both candidates trying to out-do each other on very limited and self-defeating concepts of security which have been peddled to the American people since 9/11.

The SMART program is a good start for that. And the debate cannot begin soon enough.

C. William Michaels is an attorney in Baltimore, Maryland and the author of "No Greater Threat: America After September 11 and the Rise of a National Security State" (Algora, 2002). "No Greater Threat" is the only book containing a review of the entire USA PATRIOT Act. For more information on the book and author, contact www.nogreaterthreat.com.