By Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts

ASPEN, COLO. – The Aspen Ideas Festival assigned a panel of high-powered experts to contemplate the challenges of globalization. Each listed their most important concerns. None mentioned the word terrorism.

As the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, no American has forgotten the trauma and tragedy of that day. President Bush insists that defending the homeland is still the overriding mission of his presidency, and his single-mindedness is understandable.

But as those experts here in Aspen reflect, memories are fading and priorities are shifting. Preventing another terrorist attack remains a critical national focus, but it’s not the only one. America faces many other threats from abroad, and the panelists highlighted one of them: foreign countries are stealing some of the world’s best students, scholars, scientists and innovators away from the United States.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the panelists, told us: “You don’t have to come here anymore. We are in a marketplace, and if we don’t provide the services, they’ll go elsewhere.” Added James Steinberg, dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs: “We are getting badly hurt, we are losing a lot of talented people.”