Monday, June 21, 2004
Priority Problems in Homeland Security
On Friday (Saturday's paper), the House rejected in an urban-rural split a plan to transfer $446 million of a $33 billion Homeland Security budget from a fund generally distributed to every part of the country to high-risk cities. The Mayor of New York was rightly incensed. While New York receives $5.47 a person in anti-terrorism financing, Vermont and Wyoming receive over $30.00. The Homeland Security operation reflects another remarkable inability to prioritize. In Connecticut, for example, all of its nearly 200 towns are to get a cut of the pie, with slices so small that they are essentially meaningless. It is becoming a kind of joke, a diversion.
The priority problem stems in part from the fact that terrorism is too generally defined. While there may be a terrorist next door who is tinkering with chemical agents, what Homeland Security was established to resist was the danger from major international terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. It was not set up to stop another Oklahoma City bombing or another high school shoot-out. If this distinction could be remembered, then Homeland Security resources would be directed toward what international terrorists target, that is "symbolic targets", targets whose destruction will make a major impression throughout the world. This means its objective would be understood to prevent or ameliorate attacks on major targets in the largest cities, or at least the people of these cities, and attacks against major governmental targets, especially in Washington, D.C. At the other extreme, it would not mean attacks against people or value targets in Alpine, California or Redding, Connecticut.
Homeland Security should do an adequate target assessment from this standpoint, then distribute money in its terms. It should then give money within states to (1) large cities such as New York or Chicago, and (2) state governments, to be used, for example, by state health services or state police.
On Friday (Saturday's paper), the House rejected in an urban-rural split a plan to transfer $446 million of a $33 billion Homeland Security budget from a fund generally distributed to every part of the country to high-risk cities. The Mayor of New York was rightly incensed. While New York receives $5.47 a person in anti-terrorism financing, Vermont and Wyoming receive over $30.00. The Homeland Security operation reflects another remarkable inability to prioritize. In Connecticut, for example, all of its nearly 200 towns are to get a cut of the pie, with slices so small that they are essentially meaningless. It is becoming a kind of joke, a diversion.
The priority problem stems in part from the fact that terrorism is too generally defined. While there may be a terrorist next door who is tinkering with chemical agents, what Homeland Security was established to resist was the danger from major international terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. It was not set up to stop another Oklahoma City bombing or another high school shoot-out. If this distinction could be remembered, then Homeland Security resources would be directed toward what international terrorists target, that is "symbolic targets", targets whose destruction will make a major impression throughout the world. This means its objective would be understood to prevent or ameliorate attacks on major targets in the largest cities, or at least the people of these cities, and attacks against major governmental targets, especially in Washington, D.C. At the other extreme, it would not mean attacks against people or value targets in Alpine, California or Redding, Connecticut.
Homeland Security should do an adequate target assessment from this standpoint, then distribute money in its terms. It should then give money within states to (1) large cities such as New York or Chicago, and (2) state governments, to be used, for example, by state health services or state police.
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