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November 21, 2001
Tom
Ridge for Supreme Dictator
By Robert E. Heiler,
Executive Director, IASPS - DC
Robert
M. Gates, in Monday’s New
York Times, calls Tom Ridge’s new post
“The Job Nobody Trained For.” This suggests an
interesting intellectual exercise: try to write a
one-sentence mission statement for the Office of
Homeland Security.
“To
coordinate efforts by various governmental departments,
agencies and officials to protect American citizens from
attack on American soil by other nations, sub-national
organizations or individuals.”
It
sounds excessively bureaucratic. And before it is truly
accurate, this problem will get worse. Ridge’s
newly-created cabinet-level post is not only supposed to
oversee and integrate existing programs, but develop
better means of homeland defense as well.
To
achieve this, Ridge will require the assistance of the
Justice Department in prosecution of those accused of
threatening American lives. Maintaining peace and
tranquility within the borders of the U.S. will touch on
many other existing government agencies as well. This is
what the common defense clearly requires.
No
one denies that the creation of the post and department
was a good idea, clearly in the interests of the general
welfare of American citizens. A step toward the
perfection of the Union, absolutely essential to the
protection of our liberty, and our children’s liberty.
Okay,
let’s take another crack at it:
“To
form a more perfect Union, establish justice and ensure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of
liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”
What
a great turn of phrase! It almost sounds familiar.
The
point of this exercise is to illustrate that the
“Office of Homeland Security” ought to be the whole
show. The fact that President Bush had to create a new
bureaucracy to serve these ends is testimony to the
systemic illness of our government, caused by its drift
from its original purposes. Presumably, Tom Ridge’s
new job was created because the end it is supposed to
serve was not being adequately pursued. In other words,
the (very expensive) government of the only superpower
on Earth was allowing its citizens to walk around
unprotected from foreign aggression. This deplorable
situation persists. It would seem fair for American
citizens to demand that improvement in this enterprise
take precedence over, say, doling out aid to everyone
from Albania to Zimbabwe. Just a thought.
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