Research Paper on "Homeland Security and Terrorism"

Research Paper 6 pages (1900 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Homeland Security & Terrorism

The Costs of Homeland Security and Fighting Terrorism

Freedom and human rights

in America are doomed.

The United States will lead the American people into an unbearable hell and a choking life.

Osama bin Laden, CNN 2002

On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by a group of nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes and hit them against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon buildings. The terrorist attack killed nearly 3,000 people and caused enormous financial and property damage. Those direct costs, however, were not the only concern of Americans at the time. Many worried that the United States could be attacked again -- perhaps, on a more massive scale than on 9/11. In response to this overwhelming sentiment of fear and also motivated by a sense of responsibility, the Bush Administration enacted several sweeping new laws, granting federal agents greater authority in order to prevent future terrorist attacks. In particular, the Bush Administration established the Department of Homeland Security that would coordinate the anti-terrorist activities of all law enforcement agencies from a centralized hub. While the move by the Bush Administration was a response based on legitimate grounds, the business of homeland security since then turned into precisely that: business; a costly enterprise that inflates the threat of terrorism and channels the budgetary money toward policies that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.

For the discussion of homeland security and terrorism, it is necessary to understand the definitions of these terms and how they are defined by the Government. The homeland security was defined by the Bush Administration as "a concerted national effort to present terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America's vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage from attacks that do occur" (Office of Homeland Security 2). The original document also envisioned bringing together the Congress and other state actors, the private sector, and the American people together in a concerted effort to thwart terrorism. And the Title 22 of the United States Code defines terrorism as a "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience" (Niskanen 351). This definition also affirms that the targets of attack may be civilians and military personnel who are unarmed during the attack. Also according to this definition, the main goal of the terrorist act may not necessarily be the infliction of damage but also its impact on a broad audience.

The costs of terrorism are manifold. It takes lives and causes property damage. But in the case of the United States, according to Niskanen, there are "other dimensions of the costs of terrorism" that "are almost completely a function of the response to terrorism," rather than terrorism itself (352, italics original). The real threat of terrorism is vastly overblown, while the amount of resources allowed to fight terrorism is too high. For example, between 1996 and 2006, less than 400 Americans a year were killed as a result of domestic and foreign terrorism, while the number of people who died as a consequence of traffic accidents was more than a hundred times more. But the government never calls the public to be on high alert over traffic accident deaths and does not allocate large sums of money to prevent those deaths as it does to prevent terrorist attacks.

There are other costs associated with homeland security. Americans have paid by sacrificing many of their civil liberties. These include restrictions in airports, stricter immigration laws that sometimes gratuitously harass lawful noncitizens, greater eavesdropping of client-attorney conversations, eavesdropping on the population through the use of national telephone companies, and racial profiling of ethnic minorities. New homeland security measures also authorize the FBI to conduct secret entries into homes and business offices without the knowledge of property owners and "gain access to anyone's financial, medical, employment, and even library records without the approval of a judge" (Niskenen 353). American citizens not only sacrifice some of these civil liberties but also their taxpayer money that is used to cover the costs of these new homeland security measures. For instance, new search procedures implemented by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) cost taxpayers almost $5 billion a year -- not to mention an additional hour or two spent at the airport by air travelers.

As part of a homeland security program to prevent terrorism, the U.S. government began its color-coded alert system, which other than causing confusion, anxiety, and fear, does not seem to serve any purposes. It is not clear how these color-coded alerts can in any way prevent terrorism. But while the purpose of color-coded alert system is to thwart potential terrorist attacks, there are costs associated with homeland security that has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. "A large part of the increase in the defense budget," for example, "is for new high tech weapons systems that would make no contribution to defense against terrorism" (Niskanen 355). These weapons systems include a ballistic missile defense system, new nuclear submarines that cost around $3 billion each, new fifth-generation fighter jets, and other systems that may be effective in fighting a conventional war but are largely ineffective in thwarting terrorism. Some other homeland security measures, such as passing an agricultural legislature known as the Farm Security Act, do not even have a semblance of anti-terrorism.

Benjamin Friedman of CATO Institute, writing for Foreign Policy, gives more examples of such squandering for non-anti-terrorist measures. $725,000 was given to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to secure port funds in 2003. Northern Mariana Islands received more than $4 million in 2005 as part of anti-terror budget. And the Grand Forks County, North Dakota, in 2003 "received $1.5 million in federal funds to purchase trailers equipped to respond to nuclear attacks and more biochemical suits than it has police officers" ("Homeland Security" 22). Moreover, these costs steadily grow each year. If the federal spending on first responders was $616 in 2001, in 2005 it grew to a whopping $3.4 billion. And the Department of Homeland Security's yearly budget is roughly an equivalent of Russia's annual defense budget.

The problem, however, is not only about mishandling the resources. The Department of Homeland Security seems to be a giant bureaucracy plagued by ineffectiveness, incompetence, and failures. Congressional assessments and the Homeland Security's staff agree on this. Even Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission chairman, said in December 2005: "While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl," while many Homeland Security personnel consider the department one of the worst places to work in the government because of its treatment of its own personnel (Light 37). Out of the department's annual budget, only 65% is used on programs that properly deal with homeland security. The rest of the "bureaucratic pieces do not belong in an organization designed to protect the nation from terrorism" (Light 38).

Inflating dangers of terrorism redirect resources from real and probable dangers, and may actually make American citizens less safe. But there are many stakeholders who are interested in keeping the high state of alertness: those who are generously bankrolled by the Department of Homeland Security. To explain the functioning -- or, rather, dysfunctioning -- of the homeland security, Benjamin Friedman applies the concept of "precautionary principle," the concept used by health and environmental regulations to determine the favorable risk. "Whenever some activity poses a possible risk to health, safety, or the environment," Friedman says, "the government takes preventive action. Government intervention is warranted even if the evidence that the activity is harmful is uncertain and the cost of preventive action is high" ("The Terrible 'Ifs'" 32). The Bush Administration's policy of preemptive doctrine and the allocation of large sums of money for homeland security that does not deal with terrorism are excellent characterizations of precautionary principle.

But the precautionary principle is not an effective model to follow in state policies. It is incoherent and may render attempts to prevent risks useless. An attempt to determine the favorable risk is problematic because the government cannot deal with one risk only due to the multiplicity of existing risks involving environmental and health problems -- or the danger of terrorism, for that matter. Trying to deal with one risk may also take away resources from other government programs, leading essentially to other risks. Precautionary principle at times may actually cause additional dangers because of unintended consequences of risk prevention. "If we took the precautionary principle seriously, we would have to be cautious about all the dangers a particular decision touches," Friedman explains. "That includes the danger of doing nothing. Taken literally, the principle prevents all action and inaction, making it useless" ("The Terrible 'Ifs'" 32). The U.S. Government nonetheless embraced the precautionary principle in its homeland security and anti-terrorist policies.

According to Friedman, one major problem with precautionary reasoning is that it hides political motives behind its reasoning advanced to defend homeland security. Motives behind precautionary reasoning involve deliberate inflation of terrorist threats, suggesting that the threats America… READ MORE

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