America the vulnerable.

• Author: Debat, Alexis
• Position: 9/11/06: Five Years On: A Symposium

WE ARE what we dream. In this respect, few fragments of America's DNA are more fundamental than the myth that it needs--and can achieve--absolute security. While European and Asian nations have long learned to live with relative security from threats abroad and have configured their intelligence and security services accordingly, Americans oscillate between fantasies of total security and exhibiting a certain fatalism about the costs of action, trusting in Providence's benevolence to keep us from harm. We worry about Al-Qaeda attacking targets like Indiana's Amish Country Popcorn Factory, yet still only screen a small percentage of the cargo containers that enter U.S. waters. We hear that homeland security and the intelligence community need reform, but we already know such efforts will be tamed, chaotic and overly politicized. America still has not even heard of let alone sorted out--the real, seminal choices to make in the War on Terror between relative security and relative democracy.

On the one hand, since 9/11 we have vastly expanded the U.S. security perimeter far beyond our borders, created an entirely new Department for Homeland Security, and added another level of bureaucracy to the intelligence community. Many Americans take comfort in the perception of greater security from more vigorous screening procedures at airports to increased surveillance of persons of interest. On the other hand, the multiple failures of federal, state and local governments to respond decisively and adequately after the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina as well as revelations about extensive waste and fraud with homeland security contracts including on systems that were supposed to screen for radioactive materials at American ports raise questions not only about how effective the post-9/11 response has been, but also about how far we can go under America's current political culture. A 2003 Council on Foreign Relations report warned that the United States was still dangerously unprepared to cope in the event of another catastrophic terrorist attack; its conclusions remain valid three years later. And chances are that they will be relevant for many years.

The American response, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was an obvious move: taking the fight directly to Al-Qaeda. So far, the United States has won the first rounds in its War on Terror: Osama bin Laden and his organization have indeed been weakened and Al-Qaeda, driven from its base in Afghanistan, has been forced to change tactics. Some post-9/11 plots have indeed been foiled. But business as usual is never swimming very far below the surface in Washington; many policymakers reverted to the status quo as of September 10, 2001--whether it be using the homeland security budget as yet another place for pork barrel politics or conducting a foreign policy that seems calculated to dis-encourage other states from extending their full cooperation to us in fighting international terrorism.

One of the main problems is that the War on Terror was framed narrowly, as simply tackling the network that planned and executed 9/11, and setting short-term parameters for V-T day when the War on Terror will have been...