Welcome to Your Security

In our new Simmer War, we are engaging in both non conventional and conventional attacks on our enemy. It is not the same as it was within the cold war, with a well defined enemy with national boundaries and most importantly a capital. This capital could be targeted from thousands of miles away and thousands of feet underground. No, this is the age of a boundless fear, fear of the person next to you on the plane, subway, taxi-cab, or crowded area. We have no contextualization of the “other side”, other then irrational stereotypes. We have no strategy to deal with the fear of attack. There is no safe guard strategy to rationalize terrorism.

But what we do have is an over-rated and rather ambiguous color system. In the United States we have the Homeland Security Advisory System. A system developed to alert the citizenry of the level of an impending terror attack. What is it? It is a color system based on a five-tear system ranging from low (green) to severe (red). But what do these colors mean for the everyday man? The system caused panic in the early stages of the implementation. Think the anthrax scares at the office of Senator Tom Daschle. In 2001 riding on the heels of the attacks on the World Trade Center, a color increase did little to promote awareness of the likely hood of an attack.

The color system needs to be changed in order to effectively promote a method of terror caution. What we have now as a system of prevention and caution awareness which is doing nothing to alert the everyday individual. Homeland Security Advisory System does little more then create mass hysteria. The system is flawed in its nature. Instead of alerting the public on possible actions and which can be taken to prevent attacks, the system makes the citizen helpless and afraid, leaving the full security to the federal authorities.

The Civil Defense system of our nation’s Cold War era was a system by which information was relayed and actions could be taken on the behalf of the citizenry. The CD (Civil Defense) system would alert via radio and television broadcasts of impending attacks from nuclear forces and what appropriate steps should be taken. Regular drills were held as a prevention tool. Education on what nuclear fission is what kind of damage it can do in weapons form and what the average citizen can do, were an integral part of the success of the CD.

On the Global War on Terror the Homeland Security Department has failed to reach the success of the CD system fifty years earlier. The CD was absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, and all relative actives of the CD were now in the hands of the DHS. The DHS has failed to meet the simple guidelines which were established by the CD. The CD system was meant to keep the public involved in the affairs of its national security. The CD system gave the public a way to understand the threat of the nuclear bomb, take the necessary steps to prevent mass casualties, and practice drills, which could give some confidence in the general population. This was manner in which the general population could contextualize the fear of nuclear weapons attack and take measures to keep themselves and their families safe.

The DHS has provided no such system for the terror threat, no drills, no information, only a color scheme. However the question can be posed, what drills can the DHS give to the population? The answer is simple; give the population the basic terror prevention techniques known to the government, in addition to relying on the federal and state authorities for prevention. The key to the success of the CD was national citizen involvement, the DHS has kept the information painfully secret, and this has a vicious backlash of fear which presides over the homeland.

The DHS must provide the citizenry of the U.S. with information on a scale seen at the time of the CD. Mass publications of standardized material of facts and prevention techniques would be the tools by which to give contextualization to the war on terror. Terror as seen as an ominous unstoppable force will only embolden the terrorists and their goals. By informing the public of main targets of terror, typical methods of terror attacks, suspicious activity recognition, will give the ability to the citizen to participate in his or her national security. This will prove to be the vital tool on the war on terror.