Homeland Security

Homeland Insecurity?
After a disaster as big as the September 11th attacks, it was easy to see that America was in need of something major. For this reason the Office of Homeland Security was created. At face value it seemed like a great idea. Who doesn’t want a safer place to live, one where we Americans don’t have to constantly look over our shoulders to see if al Qaeda is ready to attack? Well, it turns out that this agency isn’t exactly living up to its original expectations. Sure, we’re fighting ‘terror’ across seas, and invading citizen’s privacy, but come on, do we feel any safer?
First, the office has the clever idea of having color coded terror warnings that the news posts every night. We’re sitting at mid-range yellow (US Department of Homeland Security1) now, but God forbid we get to red! Then we might have to run out and buy duct-tape and plastic sheets so we can protect ourselves from terrorist strikes. No worries,
America. The terror alert doesn’t rise solely when there is terrorist activity, it also happens when the President’s ratings are down and we need a little ‘stick by your President, soldiers and country,’ pep talk by the news puppets.
The office of Homeland Security basically rolled 22 agencies into one, including the Secret Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Coast Guard, Border Control, and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). Now those in charge of these 22 agencies report to Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary, and he relays the news to the President. More or less, they are cutting people out of the information loop because the agencies have report through a middleman. When has it ever improved anything to add a middleman to the works? No one in the Bush administration is ever at fault, or has to take any blame, and with Homeland Security acting as a middle man it creates even more mud that American’s need to wade through to figure out which politician or organization is responsible for what. Michael Brown, head of FEMA during
the Hurricane Katrina Disaster, is finally being raked over the coals for his horrible job handling the post-disaster action. He did the thing the Bush administration loves to do: nothing. They do nothing about problems until all hell breaks loose, then the party at fault just blames someone else or resigns, and it is dropped. Brown is certainly doing this now, by throwing the blame on local officials in Louisiana, such as Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. "I guess you want me to be the superhero that is going to step in there and suddenly take everybody out of New Orleans," he [Brown] said. That arrogant sarcasm was responded to by Shay, R. Connecticut, who replied, "No. What I wanted you to do was do your job of coordinating." (“Brown Puts Blame on Louisiana Officials.” Cnn.com Oct 2005.)
A vast majority of the office’s problems were brought to a head during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The agency says it has a comprehensive plan to ‘protect critical infrastructure.’ This obviously doesn’t include the levies in New Orleans, which were known to be flawed. This should make you wonder what other critical infrastructure isn’t being kept up and looked out for. I sure hope we don’t have anything ‘critical’ here in
Pennsylvania. Another part of the comprehensive plan is defending against catastrophic threats, and emergency preparedness. As for catastrophic events, I guess a grade five Hurricane, broken levies, and the loss of American lives just don’t count as catastrophic. Emergency preparedness clearly isn’t too much of a worry for the agency even though it claims it is striving to improve it. We have also shipped a large amount of National Guardsmen overseas to fight the war in Iraq. So, who is to protect our HOME in times of need? Also, if we are so prepared for an emergency, then why couldn’t we evacuate New Orleans even with lots of time and warning? What would happen if a major city was attacked and there wasn’t much time? Would we all just be screwed? Don’t worry though; the government would just throw lots of money at us after the fact, a poor attempt to cover their butts for allowing it to happen in the first place.
If the office of Homeland Security was living up to its name and actually
keeping America safe, then we would all be much better off. Instead, since the agency was formed we have lost a lot of our home protection, the National Guard. Also, we have to wonder: is the agency trying to stop terror, or simply terrorize the county (by making Americans live in fear of potential terror attacks)? It has done nothing to improve our
countries emergency preparedness, nor help it handle catastrophic events. If anything, it has wasted the taxpayers money and given people a false sense of what is actually going on in this country. So, I ask you, after all this country has been though in the past few years, do you feel safer? Or, do you feel like we should change the organization’s name from the Office of Homeland Security to the Office of Homeland INsecurity?

-Christie Bergstresser