Discussion question analysis and synthesis

Terrorism Preparedness

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has made a significant progress guiding against terrorist attacks using terrorism preparedness to forestall further terrorism attacks in the United States. Terrorism preparedness exercise is a broad range of response and preparedness program to support communities that might be affected by the terrorist attack. (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004).

Typically, the U.S. government has implemented a range of program for terrorism preparedness and one of the policies employed is the use of wide range of intelligence to investigate the imminent terrorism that might have occurred in the United States. Typically, the U.S. intelligence has collaborated with other intelligences globally to prevent act of terrorism in the United States. For example, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has collaborated with Pakistan intelligence to locate the hideout of Ben Laden and killed him.

Moreover, the United States has implemented various military exercises for terrorism preparedness. For example, the federal government has coordinated with the states and local governments in carrying out the terrorism preparedness. Typically, the government has implemented various training program for military personnel and non-military personnel to forestall terrorist attacks. The training program includes bomb detection program exercise, evacuation program exercise, and medical intervention exercise in case of terrorist attack. For example, the government has formed the NDMS (National Disaster Medical System) to coordinate hospital and medical care program for mass causalities in case of terrorist attacks.

One of strengths of the current terrorist preparedness exercise is that the government has been able use to the program to identify and prevent the act of terrorism in the United States. Since September 11, 2001, there is no major terrorist attack in the United States. Moreover, the government has used the information sharing strategy to share information with law enforcement agency to increase alertness and preparedness activities.

However, the media comment on government policy on terrorist preparedness identifies the weakness of the current policy in the face of the current threat of global terrorism. The press believes that the government is spending large amount of taxpayer's money to combat global terrorism instead of focusing on the strategy to combat national terrorism. Since 2001, the U.S. has overspent the taxpayer financial resources for the program implementation, which may be waste of financial resources.

Moreover, sharing of intelligence information with other non-U.S. intelligences serves as risks to the U.S. effective intelligence agency.

II: Hurricane Katrina

The hurricane Katrina of August 29, 2005 was one of the devastating hurricane incidents in the United States leading to damages of properties worth several million of dollars. The incidents also led to the death of 1,700 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The region affected New Orleans city and neighboring Mississippi. The NRP (National Response Plan) is formed in response to natural disaster such as hurricane or terrorist attack. Despite the decision to form NRP for the response of the hurricane at Katrina, there are still some policies against the implementation of the NRP at Katrina. The perceived problem is that the NRP does not full address the problem associated with the hurricane problems. Moreover, there is a lack of effective operation plan with response to the NRP.

Essentially, the CIA (Catastrophic Incident Annex) is the overarching strategy to accelerate and coordinate proactive response to catastrophic incident. Essentially, the CIA-NRP is intended to address short-notice or no-notice incidents with respect to catastrophes. However, integrating non-federal stakeholders in the NRP is other issues that make policy maker think that NRP is not appropriate for the Katrina emergence. For example, the state government, local government, non-profits organizations and private sectors have been poorly integrated to address the national emergency policy that NRP could have implemented.

One of weakness of CIA-NRF is that many states lack effective strategies to address the catastrophes associated with hurricane. For example, the Louisiana was affected by the hurricane in 2008, killing 26 people and leaving million of homes without power. In the same years, the hurricane hit Texas leading to the deaths of 30 people and millions of homes lost power.

One of the strategies that could be employed to address the weakness is for the federal government to disburse funds to implement a comprehensive training for staff at the state level to support CIA-NRF to address the problem of hurricane at the state level. Moreover, the government should also conduct a specific -- task oriented training for the non-state stakeholders that want to participate in the CIA-NRF.

III: NIMS "(National Incident Management System)"

NIMS "(National Incident Management System)" was formed in 2004 as a framework to organize response to emergency at a national scale. The NIMS uses the principle, doctrine, and organizational process to provide efficient, collaborative and effective incident management. The primary objective of NIMS is to use a framework policy to organize an incident response at national scale. Essentially, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is one the key players in coordinating with NIMS to organize the incident management in effective and efficient manner. The primary portfolio of DHS is to coordinate the proper execution for the incident response. (Department of Homeland Security, 2012).