Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the United States President assured the nation no such attacks would ever happen again on U.S. soil. It was determined that several agencies of the United States were unable to work together in a close enough contact to be able to discover threats before they happened in this case, despite having had several clues. This perceived failure by the FBI, CIA, the NSA, and police and military forces, was carefully addressed with the creation of the DHS. The below analysis will focus upon various points relating to the DHS and how it has affected our nation, namely the reasons for its establishment, the progress that has been made to increase intergovernmental cooperation, and will include early criticisms of the Department and how it has improved our nation's security as well.

As mentioned above, there were some very important reasons for the establishment of the DHS. First, it was established because of failure to communicate between several key structures about hints that had been spread by the September 11th terrorists (on accident), relating to the plot that had been put together. Furthermore, in addition to providing security and cooperation links, it was also meant to create links between the FBI and local police forces, the latter of whom were previously unable to collaborate on issues of terrorist attacks or other national security matters.

While there were some hiccups at first, it is not fair to say no progress has been made to establish such links as mentioned above. The DHS, soon after the September 11 attacks, created a color-coded system of alerts from green (safe) to red (high threat). This pattern was mostly invisible to the average American but actually meant a lot behind the scenes in matters of communication between police forces and the CIA and the FBI, in addition to airport security personnel. Thus, the progress was, in fact, achieved through the intergovernmental ability of those commanding our country to have their requests travel both ways, and the DHS thus enabled Washington to reach the average policeman.

Early criticisms of the DHS, though existent, have now all but been erased. However, these criticisms at first included references of redundancy. Many thus questioned whether the DHS was actually necessary especially in the aftermath of the attacks. This matter was corner-stoned by the belief of many that security had indeed not been improved but rather nominal measures were taken to simply look as if the Bush administration was being tough on terrorism. Despite such criticism, the DHS, in hindsight, as there were no known terrorist attacks on American soil since, one can state that the DHS has achieved some security. However, one cannot say whether it prevented attacks or whether they were even planed; however since nothing has happened the DHS has been by default a success and it is impossible to argued with that result.