Understanding Homeland Security

Understanding the Core Challenges to American Homeland Security Since the attacks on September 11th, which felled the World Trade Towers and left a gaping hole in the edifice of the Pentagon, it has become almost clich? to observe that this assault effectively altered American life forever. Whether this is an accurate sentiment or merely a self- fulfilling prophecy, it is evident that this allegedly profound re- calibration of our lives is a product of the dichotomy created by the newly emergent threat to national security and the set of legislative responses thereto. With regard to this latter category though, there remains still a great deal of debate as to whether the former category is being truly addressed or whether these new laws are in fact serving to effect changes that are separate from the conditions of our post-9/11 law-enforcement culture. This is a perspective which permeates Jonathan R. White's 2003 text on the subject, entitled Defending the Homeland. The White text is a study in the reconfiguration of government that offers many of the technical details of a monumental shift in government orientation. This would begin with the attacks in 2001. By the time the smoke had begun to clear at Ground Zero, Congress had enacted the United States Patriot Act. A bulky piece of legislation which was fast-tracked through both houses of our government without even an utterance of debate, its uncontested passage was highly contingent upon the circumstances of extreme political sensitivity and legislative uncertainty that accompanied the first month following the attacks. Its primary advocate, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, succeeded in championing the bill through Congress with little more than an hour's testimony which did not include submission to open questioning. (Lewis, 1) In an atmosphere that vociferously discouraged any indications of dissent, which Democratic congressmen especially viewed as the pathway to public crucifixion in such emotionally charged times, the Patriot Act came into force on October 24th, 2001. The Patriot Act was set forth with the proposed mission to "deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes." (107th Congress, 1) Entered into the American psyche as a weapon against those forces which would threaten national security, the legislation has since been under intense scrutiny for the tenuous nature of its passage and for its invocation of the apparent contrast between the drive to strengthen security and the Constitutional centrality of individual freedoms. It is especially illuminating to note the contrast in indicators for the security lapses which allowed September 11th to occur and the security directives which were thereafter adopted. There is a trail of active deviation from preventative security measures in the face of increasing intelligence indicators that there was a rising threat of legitimate terrorist aggression, as demonstrated by Ashcroft's unwavering pre-9/11 stance of counter-terrorism fund-cutting. "Justice Department documents released by American Progress reveal that in August 2001, the FBI specifically requested additional resources to bolster counterterrorism resources. In response, Ashcroft actually cut counterterrorism funding in critical areas including equipment grants, border control, and the National Domestic Preparedness Office. . . [N]ew analysis reveals the 2002 counterintelligence budget proposed by Ashcroft cut counterintelligence spending by more than $476 million - a 23 percent decline from 2001 funding levels." (DTP, 1) At this point, directly in the midst of a shrieking rancor amongst intelligence officials demanding attention to an inevitably approaching al Qaeda masterminded attack of theretofore unprecedented magnitude, the Justice Department executed dutifully a Bush Administration security policy of de-emphasis. While the administration would later assert that it responded to a din about possible hijacking threats by alerting 56 airlines and advising through the FAA that greater screening measures be adopted, handling of the incoming domestic intelligence was disinterested at best and suspiciously repressive at worst. But surfacing evidence makes a strong case that actions taken directly by the administration were in fact contrary to the counsel of every sector of the intelligence world. In addition to stonewalling their own intelligence advisors about the swelling level of covert terrorist activity in the summer of 2001, the Bush Administration ignored indications from abroad that the threat of attack was imminent. "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that in the weeks before the attacks, the Egyptian intelligence service warned U.S. officials of a possible attack by the bin Laden terrorist network, according to The New York Times. The White House, however, responded that the United States had no warnings at all." (Cover Story, 4) While such a response is juxtaposed sharply by the above outlined indications which were presented to the Bush Administration, this plea of ignorance is perfectly consistent with the Bush Administration's pre-9/11 security policy. In spite of all the warning signs, there is readily presentable documentation that the Bush Administration did not wish to make counter-terrorism a priority. Attorney General John Ashcroft's May 2001 'budget goals memo' outlined his department's top seven priorities. Counterterrorism did not appear anywhere on the list. After 9/11, Ashcroft released a revised strategic goals memo in November 2001 that inserted a new priority at the top of the list - 'Protect America Against the Threat of Terrorism.' (DTP, 1) While there had been no evident connection between the gradual progress in American civil liberties that had occurred over the previous decade of economic prosperity and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the adoption of the Patriot Act as a means to the prevent of future vulnerabilities turned inward. The Patriot Act awarded the United States government with a broad range of newfound powers which have been said, by advocates of its content, to diminish the restraints to law-enforcement that have made it so difficult for agencies to prevent the occurrence of domestic terrorism. Of particular note to many private citizens of the United States has been the gradual breakdown of a set of protections to individual privacy. With government surveillance of domestic, subversive activities taking center- stage in the race to assign blame for the security shortcomings that allowed these attacks to occur, the Patriot Act is especially concerned with expanding the rights of intelligence agencies, local law enforcement and the federal government to acquire information from and about American citizens. With new laws deconstructing the structural processes already in place to regulate the acquisition of rights for the use of telephone wiretaps, the willful seizure of personal information and the investigation of individuals without probable cause, the United States government responded to the attacks on its people by directing its legislation at those who had already been victimized by terrorism. Even beyond weakening protections to individual privacy, the legislation was crafted to incorporate a public sector forum as yet unaccounted for, extending "to the Internet the already broad authority to monitor transactional information about communications with very little justification." (CDT, 2) In this set of responses to the terrorist attacks, the federal government began a process wherein Constitutional liberties had become legislatively synonymous with a weak national security strategy. Thus, advocates of the Patriot Act, a bill so named for indisputable reasons of image-shaping, have used its conditions to blur the line between terrorist investigation and criminal investigation and even lawful political dissent. In this last application, there is serious cause for alarm amongst defendants of the Constitution. The first amendment to the Bill of Rights is directly assailed by the legislation which, among its heretofore unthinkable entitlements, has given the government the right to review the medical records, emails, library records and other such distinctly private affects as they pertained to 'suspected' individuals. (ACLU1, 1) Essentially bypassing the 'probable cause' clause which keeps criminal investigation under the control of due process, the Patriot Act is visibly adaptable to all manner of civil activity which could not have traditionally been considered in any way associated with terrorism prior to September 11th. The result is a right to free speech, political resistance and peaceable assembly that is dramatically blunted. Such is to note that the Patriot Act is today most commonly implemented in investigations concerning immigration, drug trafficking and, most nefariously, political dissent. In the face of controversial War on Terror initiatives such as the conflict in Iraq, the protest and resistance movements have been stunted by laws and permit-denials that are appropriated by the Patriot Act's emphasis on security. This likewise accounts for the pointed withdrawal from the Constitution's fourth amendment. Again, another locus at which probable cause has been removed from consideration, the hazy definition of activity which can be considered associated with terrorism can now be levied to forego the investigative processes of criminal law enforcement. In direct contrast with the spirit of the fourth amendment, "the Patriot Act broadened the government's power to search an individual's home without telling her until weeks or months later, and to do so in any criminal case." (CDT, 2) Among its many shortcomings is here one of the most troubling. With the Patriot Act, the United States government has shown itself to be either unwilling or unable to separate terrorist activity from civil or criminal activity. This springs from the inherent flaw to the logical and practical underpinnings of the 2001 bill. Its twofold set of assumptions-that safety can only be preserved through the sacrifice of personal liberties and that terrorism is the product of bureaucratic obstacles to law-enforcement-both proceed from a faulty ideological seedling that far predates 9/11. In its forceful attainment of new authorities which have even further removed it from the province of democratic process, the United States government has implemented legislation that may usher in a new era of sustained McCarthyism. With the 'terrorist' tag supplanting the 'communist' label that was considered social, professional and political anathema in the 40's and 50's, the Patriot Act is the first and broadest of post-9/11 tools for the extension of ideological hegemony in an age of highly charged philosophical division. Much like the witch-hunt that McCarthyism engendered, the Patriot Act's impact on the Bill of Rights demonstrates a common flight of misdirection in our representative democracy. When 19 foreign nationals hijacked the four airliners that caused such carnage in September, 2001, the government responded with legislation that aimed its power squarely at the rights of its own citizens. While there are countless cases emerging daily illustrating the government's willingness to flex its muscle against political groups, religious organizations and private citizens at home, it has yet to prove that these measures are providing the nation with any greater security. And as this war continues unabated, it will remain to be seen whether this short-sighted surrender of our liberties will contribute in any way to the long-term posterity of freedom. The validity of the Patriot Act and other like-minded policies, such as the shamelessly self-explanatory Total Information Awareness Act, which Congress refused to pass in 2004, is extremely suspect. Particularly, in consideration of the details concerning the September 11th attacks, there seems to be little congruity between domestic policy response and the actual administrative failings which enabled that breach to occur. The notion elicits little thought from many in the voting public who are confined to receiving the bulk of information regarding 9/11 and its fallout from mainstream media sources. It is accepted that the world has indeed changed insofar as it is now more dangerous and that daily life requires more paranoia. American culture, which in the 1990s was regarded as a beacon in the international community for technological, corporate and human rights progress, took on a far more bellicose and ideologically regressive outlook in the policy eventualities provoked by the attacks. But these changes are not the inevitabilities of a terrorist attack on American soil. They are instead the self-fulfilling prophecy of an administration which has demanded fear, blind faith, the willing suspension of disbelief and extremely low expectations of its supporters. Though the 9/11 attacks dealt Americans a serious dose of reality, the policy aftermath can be most accurately characterized as an ongoing distortion thereto. An anonymous Bush official famously stated during the 2004 presidential campaign regarding the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction intelligence scandal that many of the administration's enemies in the press were internally referred to as members of the 'reality community.' Truly, the Bush Administration's relationship with the reality community took its first turn for the worst when, within days of 9/11, the White House had begun to reveal its two-pronged strategy for survival in the New America. The top policy initiative became the inception of an ultra-aggressive form of proactive pursuit called the War On Terror. This was an indefinable, self-applied clearance to undertake massive, pre-emptive military action against any entity or nation deemed a terrorist threat. The principle would be to seek out terrorist havens and destroy the enemy before it could reach the shores of the U.S. The War on Terror is a daily reminder of the changed world theory. Now in the seventh year of a struggle with an Iraqi population that is reluctant to be beaten into democracy, the U.S. is helming an international war that seems to know no limit of philosophical manipulation and no parameter of spatial, chronological or practical resolution. American military casualties have reached a mark not seen since the War on Vietnam that, in its attempt to forcibly deliver democracy to a native population through armed invasion, lasted for more than a decade and ultimately failed in its goal. Here, there is evidence that, while America was a nation profoundly different at the end of 2001 than it was at the beginning of that same year, it is not today profoundly different from the emergent pattern in our history. The War on Terror, in both its infinitive nature and its global pervasiveness, echoes the Cold War in many ways, not the least of which is domestic policy. This is the second prong of security policy adaptation with which civil rights activists are struggling today. The passage of the Patriot Act immediately after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent creation of the Department of Homeland Security are the realization of the Bush Administration's response to the domestic threat. The Patriot Act is informed by the faulty theory that intelligence errors are to blame for security failings leading up to September 11th. It is therefore designed to break down legal obstruction to the collection of intelligence on suspected terrorists both at home and abroad. Inherent to this policy has been a broad-based subversion of privacy rights to ordinary American citizens, marked by the proliferation of internet interactions, phone taps, search warrants, ethnic profiling, Terror Watch List Designation and a whole host of options now available to law enforcement agencies with little Constitutional or judicial restraint. While these actions have taken us great leaps forward in terms of the erosion of civil liberties, and have done much to remind us of the not-too- distant scars of McCarthyism, they do not address what is at the root of terrorism. Like the administration's pre-9/11 approach of willful deviation from overwhelming logic, its post-9/11 strategy of initiating questionable military engagements and lowering the hammer of prevention on the American public is one which is both divergent from reality and poorly- suited to its stated intention. The microcosm of Iraq, which as the site of our most recent endeavor in this crusade has become the single greatest location for the recruitment of terrorism in the world, provides a useful example of the ideological flaw in eliminating fundamentalist violence by creating more widows, orphans and homeless, jobless men. This is an illustration of the counterproductive collateral damage which is becoming the calling card of our new war. In a period of two terms, the Bush Administration had been responsible for a real change in the cultural climate and the future prospects for the United States. Both by way of the negligence which allowed September 11th to occur and by way of the tragically misappropriated power which saw its resultant policies into legislation, the Bush Administration will ultimately be the subject of incontrovertible reproach for its role in America's social, economic, military and geopolitical decline. Thus, the Department of Homeland Security continues to struggle today in the face of such core problems as inherent tendencies toward the violation of American liberties, its sapping of resources from other core agencies and the continued practical difficulties of achieving its full operational capacity. These challenges speak to core failures in the ideology and perspective of the previous Bush Administration. Particularly, its rationale and plan for combating terrorism would be faulty, proceeding with no accordance to the causes of events on 9/11. This is particularly notable in the approach which the government adopted to detect internal perils to its sovereignty, crafting legislation designed to fortify the tools entitled for oversight of American citizens. Therefore, "just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the "USA/Patriot Act," an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens." (ACLU, 1) As the American Civil Liberties Union would indicate, the increasingly lax protections for citizens against the privacy invasion of the American government would create allowances for the tapping of phones, the warrantless searching of computers, the monitoring of email exchanges and even the tracking of library checkout content. This speaks to a primary problem which the Obama Administration must eliminate if it is to improve prospects for providing a more secure nation that does not simultaneously sacrifice American privacy and other expected freedoms. Efforts at creating a more secure nation would be reflected in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The massive bureaucracy, created within the language of the Patriot Act, would become the composite title for a variety of new and old agencies. As the text Noftsinger et al (2007) would indicate, the events that would follow would throw into the spotlight the inherent contradiction that was the Homeland Security policy. This consolidation would blunt the effectiveness of many crucial agencies, such as FEMA. Subordinate to a department with a focus primarily on the monitoring of improprieties by America's citizens, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would prove itself fully vacant of functionality and lacking in needed resources when, in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans. The hapless and deadly failure of FEMA to properly respond to the needs of its citizens, leaving thousands to suffer and even die in the toxic floodwaters of a drowned city, illustrates that this strategy for security has actually rendered us far less secure. This is further reinforced by the difficulties that an economically strapped nation has encountered in funding the ambitious multi-agency expansions which have been part and parcel to the construction of the new Department. The Obama Administration has not only inherited the greatest budget deficit in American history but it simultaneously faces the demand to staff countless newly created positions in a set of departments which lack the economic resources to pay what are projected to be critical individuals in the combating of terrorism.