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THE BIG PICTURE of a commercial container, he will instead bring them through the Caribbean on a private craft. Our counter-terror preparedness has so far been akin to squeezing on a vast balloon—the air is always displaced to a new region in need of compression. But with so many articulated security needs, what principles are we applying when we evaluate the cost-beneﬁt of each priority? Are all of our decisions driven by the immediate needs of the moment, or can we defend them as part of an overarching strategy? In the defense community there are protracted, ﬁercely argued debates about whether we should prepare our military to ﬁght conventional wars, or whether we should continue the transition begun by Secretary Rumsfeld to train, equip and plan for small wars and counterinsurgencies. We ﬁnd little in the way of such open debate and self-criticism in the arena of homeland security. Undoubtedly, key leaders of both the departed and new administrations have come to their own conclusions about the appropriate course we should set for ourselves—what is missing is the public dimension of this discussion. In answering why this discussion does not exist, we can point to a number of factors. One signiﬁcant reason is Undoubtedly, key that homeland security leaders of both the is a relatively new and departing and incoming undeveloped discipline. administrations have come Efforts which had formerly to their own conclusions been isolated and narrowly about the appropriate focused on areas such course we should set as drug interdiction are for ourselves—what now part of a larger, more is missing is the public diverse enterprise. As a dimension of this discussion. result, there does not yet exist, as with the defense and foreign relations communities, a large and semi-permanent policy apparatus of think tanks, research universities, policy journals and professional Congressional staffers. Lacking these types of leaders, homeland security will continue to be a hazily deﬁned enterprise. But the most fundamental obstacle to reasoned debate is the scarring legacy of 9/11. Any criticism of our current strategy rubs up uncomfortably against the memory of the attacks. We ﬁnd it intolerable that anything less than absolute prevention should be our guiding principle. The photographs and ﬁlms of the attacks, frequently replayed, are often coupled with the homilies of “never forget” and “never again.” And indeed, any other response would feel like an affront to our untold dead. One unintended, and unfortunate, consequence of this reaction is that we are less honest with ourselves about the nature of terrorism. Most of us in the security community believe that the success we have had in preventing further attacks is a brittle achievement, liable to shatter suddenly and without warning. A bevy of recent reports have underscored this opinion by explicitly warning about future attacks. Vigilance and preparedness are common watchwords of such reports. It is rarer to read about resilience, and rarer still to read about psychological resilience. The distinction is important, as one suggests our physical capacity to respond, while the other suggests our spiritual and emotional capacity to rebound. The classic example of this is Great Britain during World War II, in which the populace deﬁantly refused to treat the Nazi bombing campaign in a sensationalized manner, but rather as a risk that is terrible, but acceptable, for the privilege of living in a free society. The threats America faces today are not from a totalitarian state, but from those who would use our openness against us. This creates an understandable fear; but again, for the privilege of living under a limited government, we must tolerate this risk as an acceptable burden of liberty. A bit of stoicism is in order. We cannot prevent all terror just as we cannot prevent all commonplace crime—both must be managed. “We recognize there is no perfect security. Moreover, it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate all risk,” Secretary Chertoff wisely councils us elsewhere in this magazine. Unfortunately, on the part of many other ofﬁcials there is a basic unwillingness to communicate maturely with the public. This emotionally driven reaction means that our politicians are not inclined to risk formulating a strategy that may deny the unrealistic goal of “never again.” As a result of this failed dialogue, many policies are directed de facto from the operational level, where skill and professionalism are unquestioned, but where the responsibility for long term vision should not inhere. Others that have faced down the scourge of terrorism—Israel, Great Britain, Spain, and India, for example—have accepted that terrorist attacks are not existential threats. Nor is terrorism intended to be. It is a tactic meant to alter the behavior of an enemy by demoralizing him. Al Qaeda attacked us because they sought to draw the U.S. military into a prolonged conﬂict in Afghanistan in which we would be bankrupted as the Soviets were. Hamas ﬁred rockets into Israel because it sought to provoke a military response that would kill Palestinian civilians and destroy mosques and hospitals. Hamas calculated that, by this reaction, Israel would diminish its moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world and position Hamas to succeed its rival Fatah as the standard bearer of Palestinian resistance. Lashkare-Taiba attacked Mumbai because it sought to reverse the growing peace accord between India and Pakistan, and to draw them into armed conﬂict—nuclear war, if lucky. The examples abound, but the lesson is in every instance the same: To the extent that we allow ourselves to be inﬂuenced in our daily lives and in our governing policies by terrorist attacks, we have allowed ourselves to be mastered by our enemies. It is in the response to terror where a people’s mettle is revealed. The 9/11 era, early on deﬁned as one of fear, should be reconceived as one of resiliency and courage in the face of a cruel and depraved adversary. We have allowed ourselves to be shackled to a legacy that exerts enormous power over our lives. America is owed a leadership that communicates in different terms, and that fosters a much needed debate about the appropriate aims and limits of our homeland security strategy. Morgan Stempf is the Managing Editor of the Homeland Defense Journal. Visit www.homelanddefensejournal.com Homeland Defense Journal | 29

Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009

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