The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was created in November 2002 by hiving off several existing agencies – the INS, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, etc. – from their prior departmental affiliations and placing them all under a new department specifically tasked with coordinating terrorism-prevention efforts. (At the time, I recall reflecting that a “Ministry of Security” or some such is something you would expect to find in a police state and usually means a secret police force specializing in suppression of political dissidents . . .)
Looking back over the past four years – was the creation of DHS a good idea? Necessary reorganization? Irrelevant reshuffling? Predictable bureaucratic clusterfuck? Potential threat to our civil liberties?
(I know we haven’t suffered any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since the department was created, but that’s really because I sprinkle rocksalt on all the local sidewalks once a week. It also keep away bears! )
Well, they’ve discovered and prevented a lot of “unspecified threats”. Real efficacy is far less well quantified; it certainly had the effect of shifting from being concerned about responding to natural disasters to “security threats” with obvious impacts on the Gulf Coast. And despite the notion that DHS would be one happy family, it appears that departmental and agency rivalries are still going strong.
On the other hand, it did add another layer of bureaucracy and provide a new venue of employment for underrepresented bureaucratic flunkies, so…And the Orwellian undertones help contribute to the general sense of cynicism and paranoia that the current Administration seems to be gung-ho about promoting.
As much as I dislike Bush’s administrative incompetence, the reality of 9/11 tends to focus the mind, and terrorism against he US as a real world threat should not be diminished. Look at the Islamist terrorism picture worldwide. If they could get to us, and kill us, they would. These aren’t ghost stories. There are people who are dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible if only they could find a way to get in the US and stage a way to make it happen.
It’s odd that merely 5 years after 2 huge buildings came crashing down, that the probability of terrorism is reduced to a near joke by you. The bear is very real, and just because there is gate between you and the bear, and he hasn’t popped up in a few years don’t reduce it to the status of a joke. There are a lot of dead people in New York that testify that it’s a very, very real concern.
:rolleyes: The joke, astro, is based on skepticism that DHS makes any difference to the risk we might suffer a terrorist attack, considering that 9/11 heightened the vigilance of all our military and law-enforcement agencies, which is why no later plot has succeeded. They won’t be caught napping a second time. But how much practical difference does it make to which Cabinet secretary they ultimately report? I class that under the heading of “rocksalt repels bears.”
An even funnier joke is the “Threat Level.” Yeah, let’s let the terrorists know what days we’re least expecting them!
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