Homeland Security Watch

Perhaps the largest “event” security operation ever in our history is unfolding before our eyes in real time on cable news and I still can’t help get over that this Pope is being transported around in a small Fiat hatchback.  Would anyone, can anyone, remark on the choice of vehicle in terms of security?

My (half) joke aside, I do want to elicit your opinions, views, and even random thoughts concerning Pope Francis’ visit as it impacts homeland security. I origninally thought to ask to keep remarks focused on the security aspect of his trip.  But it occurred to me that many of the subjects he has or is expected to talk about – immigration, climate change, financial inequality – are homeland security issues.

Much has already been written on the security efforts involved in each of the cities he will be visiting.  Has enough been done in terms of security?  Too much?

What about the impact of his words on homeland security related topics? Can he move the needle regarding these subjects, or will everyone listen politely and then go back to their previous thoughts/beliefs/opinions as soon as he leaves?

Picking one of his favorite topics, can income inequality/concern for the poor become a homeland security topic? Should it?

So…what do you think?

This morning the hotel left a USA Today outside my door. On the opinion page the editors call for  the US to accept more Syrian refugees.  I perceive the editors’ position is prompted primarily by ethical concerns, but they feel compelled to make a strategic argument.  They fail, in my judgment, to make a strong argument.

The newspaper has, as usual, recruited an opposing view.  Today Congressman Peter King has authored what is pasted below in-full.  The Congressman is being reasonable.  If security is your top priority, his is a persuasive argument.

From an ethical perspective it is a deeply mistaken argument.  It tells us we are allowed to dismiss the present pain of another because of a possible risk to ourselves.

Most ethical systems: Stoic, Judeo-Christian, Confucian, Islamic, even Epicurean are skeptical of narrowly self-interested choices.  We are in relationship with each other and when — by commission or omission — we do harm to another, we do harm to ourselves (this is, I suppose, the nub of the strategic argument the newspaper editors are circling about).  Plato has his Socrates say, “Of these two then, inflicting and suffering wrong,  we say it is a greater evil to inflict it, a lesser to suffer it.” (Gorgias)

In most situations where others are in desperate need, we cannot be of assistance without assuming some risk to ourselves.  This is true for individuals — lifeguards, firefighters, or bystanders — and for societies.

Too often in an attempt to avoid suffering, we inflict it on others.  When we do, it ought not be a surprise that others view us as hypocritical or much worse.

–+–

The following was published on the Opinion Page of USA Today on September 14, 2015.  The author is Peter King.

We have seen the tragic footage of Syrian refugees fleeing the Assad regime and ISIL.

While the United States and international community must respond, I have very serious concerns about how refugees coming here will be vetted, since we know that ISIL will attempt to infiltrate its members into the United States with these refugees. It is vital that we measure our humanitarian beliefs against the security risks of bringing in thousands of unknown individuals. Since the beginning of the year, the FBI has arrested more than 50 individuals connected with ISIL and plotting attacks in the homeland; we cannot afford to compound this threat.

With the lack of stable foreign governments and on-the-ground intelligence in Syria, our ability to vet refugees is significantly degraded. The White House announcement that 10,000 additional Syrian refugees will be admitted next year is contrary to the advice of law enforcement and intelligence professionals.

The United States has already experienced the danger of flawed refugee vetting, as well as the potential for refugees to be radicalized once they are here. In 2011, two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky for conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad in support of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIL. Other cases include “blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman; 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef; Mir Aimal Kasi, the 1993 CIA headquarters shooter; the Tsarnaev brothers; and the 20-plus cases of Somali Americans who left the U.S. to join al-Shabaab; and the dozen or so who have joined ISIL.

None of us wants any more of these threats or attacks.

To start, we need to do more to work with Jordan, where we have a good intelligence-sharing relationship. Additionally, we need to review U.S. laws regarding what data are collected from refugees and how U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies can use and retain that data. Above all, the United States needs to have a clear policy on the need to remove the Assad regime and defeat ISIL.

America has a long and proud history of providing safe harbor for refugees. We must continue to do so, but in a way that keeps America safe.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairs the counterterrorism and intellegence subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee.

–+–

Recently my non-blogging life has become more complicated.  I need to give it fuller attention.  I will as a result be taking another indefinite hiatus beginning when I push the publish button for this post.

When someone is accused of “September 10 thinking” it is usually meant to suggest attitudes that under-estimate the terrorist threat. Before September 11 we understood terrorism mostly as a matter of criminal investigation and prosecution.  After September 11, the critique strongly implies, any clear-thinking person must recognize that terrorism requires waging war to make peace.

On this tenth day of September we have experienced fourteen years of war. Thousands have been killed in the crossfire. Millions have been displaced.  There has been a militarization of domestic governance fraught with unintended consequences. Has there been a coarsening of American culture?  Perpetual war has a reputation for producing this outcome.  But Americans can be proudly rough-hewn.  Perhaps this is an effect with deeper cause.

In any case, I perceive very little prospect for peace.  If anything the terrorist threat to the United States – and many others – seems more pronounced, even more complicated than fourteen years ago.

Since 9-11 there has not been a successful “strategic” attack on the United States. Several attempts have been preempted by a combination of effective intelligence, policing, criminal prosecution, and military operations. Several mostly free-lance terrorist operations have been carried out, but the damage done pales in contrast to US mass-murders perpetrated by non-terrorists.

This is not to deny the continuing – perhaps increasing – terrorist threat.  We have seen in London, Madrid, Paris, and elsewhere what is possible.  Those we call terrorists do not obscure their ambitions.

The cause of current threats is complicated. It is not a straight line from American military operations to the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But this is one of several converging lines. Our failure to shape a more inclusive and stable post-occupation in Iraq is another of these lines.  We share with many others the failure to avert Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe. There are even more twists and knots and weird webs, not all of which can be traced to an American source. It is, however, often impossible to distinguish our lines from these others.

It was never a binary: war-fighting or policing. It has always been much more complicated.  Most police officers and military personnel are quick to agree that deadly force is best-used only when better options have proven ineffective.

But we have given the vast majority of our attention and resources to these two counter-terrorism tools.  While we can commend certain CT competencies, our current strategic situation suggests other investments are needed.

If you are expecting a comprehensive answer from me, don’t hold your breath.  But I will highlight three issues beyond fighting and prosecuting which I perceive need sustained attention if we are to be in a better place fourteen years from now.

Demographic density – There are twice as many of us as in 1965. There will be even more of us.  We are coming together closer in cities.  We are interacting more and more through communications, commerce, and culture.  The simple mathematical likelihood of conflict increases as our interactions proliferate.  If predicted shortages of water and food unfold, it could be an especially ugly century.

Proximate diversity – Conflict often arises over real or perceived differences.  What is interesting at a distance may be irritating close at hand.  What seems reasonable to me, strikes you as crazy. Economic inequality, while perpetual, was once less obvious. Until 200 years ago many of our cultural differences were buffered by various sorts of distance. Many physical, temporal, and cultural aspects of distance are experiencing compression (see supra).  This compression can encourage intentional expressions of differentiation. Such expressions escalate proximate differences that might be insignificant at a distance. One person’s creative cosmopolitanism is another’s satanic confusion.

Interdependent networks—I most often use these words to reference the electrical grids, telecommunications networks, and supply chains that facilitate and sustain the two prior issues.  If these fail, preexisting tensions may escalate. But in this context the challenge – and opportunities – of interdependence also extend to social, economic, and political networks.  Separation is increasingly difficult and usually delusional.  Relationships across various divides are real and can be constructive, even affectionate. But whatever the affect, the connections are increasingly fundamental, spreading good and bad with equal alacrity.

These are issues that seem innately to prompt either-or, yes-no, right-wrong reactions. But I worry it is precisely this analytic predisposition that threatens mutual annihilation.

Hegel used a German word that Marx allowed to be translated into English as suggesting the old way is destroyed to make way for the new. But the original word — Aufheben — can, depending on context, mean destroy or transcend or retrieve or renew. The implication, at least for me, is how prior meaning can be constructively adapted to present reality. Or how contending worldviews can be resolved. Or how thesis and antithesis might constructively coexist. Can we develop the interpersonal skills and social systems to deploy contending energies for the common good?

–+–

A program that has roots in traditional counter-terrorism, but is trying to stretch into the issues noted above is outlined in a September 9 story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

According to Deutsche Welle, on Saturday about 6600 refugees crossed the border between Hungary and Austria.  Of this number more than 2000 are expected to continue on to Germany.  (Different estimates of the numbers involved are reported by other news outlets.)

Germany plans to process at least 450,000 asylum applications this year.  Some are predicting 800,000.

Also on Saturday another thousand refugees arrived in Sicily by boat. In both Austria and Italy, most of the current refugees are from Iraq and Syria.  Kurds from along the Syrian-Turkish border have been prominent in this most recent wave of migrants.

Fighting this weekend in Marea, Syria killed at least forty-seven, according to the BBC.  Located between Aleppo and Turkey, mostly Kurdish and FSA rebels are contending with ISIS forces for control of an area the government of Turkey has identified as a potential “safe-zone” for those displaced by the Syrian wars.

Friday several news reports noted that due to budget shortfalls, food vouchers distributed to over 4 million registered refugees currently in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey will be reduced by roughly one-third. In an effort to raise additional funds, these drastic measures were originally announced by the World Food Program in July.  The United States responded with an additional $65 million. But very few west of Ankara noticed.

Thursday at least thirty died when a boat carrying mostly Somali, Sudanese, and Nigerian migrants sank off Libya as it was attempting to cross into EU waters.

Early today (Sunday) the Irish patrol ship LÉ Niamh arrived at the port of Pozzallo in Sicily with 329 refugees and migrants on board after carrying out a rescue operation about 58km north of Tripoli, Libya on Saturday.  A photo feature in today’s New York Times Magazine focuses on the perilous journey thousands are risking between North Africa and Southern Europe.

Television images of the stand-off in Budapest and a dead three-year-old in the Aegean are new and personalize the issues. But the issues are not new.  Given violence, climate change, demographic patterns, stark economic differences, and socio-political turmoil the issues will grow old with all of us.

The map above was developed using 2010 data. But the general proportions have not changed much and are unlikely to shift appreciably in the next few years no matter what.  Rather we are now experiencing — or at least seeing on a screen — the outcome of choices made at the turn of the century.  Credible arguments can find reasonable cause well prior.  Today’s crisis might have been mitigated — potentially avoided — by different decisions over the last three to fifteen years.  This does not suppose alternate decisions would not have created other problems, but it is constructive to recognize how these problems did unfold.

Putting our North American situation in this global context might — though probably won’t — cool some incendiary attitudes regarding migration issues in this hemisphere.

We ought not, however, feel too cool and collected. There are burgeoning problems close to home.  According to the United States Border Patrol, during FY2014 three-hundred-seven people died attempting to cross the Southwestern border of the United States.  This was the lowest number of confirmed deaths since 2000.  But the accumulating totals are certainly incomplete.  The deserts of Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas may be even less forgiving than the Mediterranean.  Television cameras are seldom nearby.

And while many have — quite appropriately — been moved to sympathy and action by the plight of those fleeing toward Europe, how many noticed that in August there were 911 murders in El Salvador (population 6.34 million) for a total of over 4200 since January? This even exceeds the violence of next-door Honduras, until recently the planet’s murder capital.

This late-summer the United States has — quite appropriately — been concerned by a spike in urban homicides.  To clarify the Central American context (and ours): Since the beginning of 2015 there have been 791 murders in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago (combined population: about 15 million). Less than the August total for El Salvador alone.

Given the context I am amazed we have not — yet — seen more outward migration.

It is an awkward moniker, but the core concept of Homeland Security that unfolded from September 11, 2001 was to not be so surprised again; to not allow our imagination to so fail again; to not be so stubbornly blind and self-involved again.

We’re evidently dealing with a chronic condition… and mostly failing to develop the better habits that could contribute to better health.

[To be self-critical: In 2011 and early 2012 here at HLSWatch I gave continuing attention to Syria.  But then I chose to pull-back.  This was an intellectual, ethical, and professional error. I struggle with my own bad habits.]

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: DW reports: “The dam set up by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been broken, and every two hours or so a train leaves Keleti station headed for Munich – each with a couple of hundred refugees.”  Other refugees are on the move from Serbia toward Budapest.  New arrivals continue to be reported at Kos, Lesbos and other Ionian cities.

In a speech last week to note the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the Gulf Coast, President Obama said:

Here in New Orleans, a city that embodies a celebration of life, suddenly seemed devoid of life.  A place once defined by color and sound — the second line down the street, the crawfish boils in backyards, the music always in the air — suddenly it was dark and silent.  And the world watched in horror.  We saw those rising waters drown the iconic streets of New Orleans.  Families stranded on rooftops.  Bodies in the streets.  Children crying, crowded in the Superdome.  An American city dark and under water.  

And this was something that was supposed to never happen here — maybe somewhere else.  But not here, not in America.  And we came to realize that what started out as a natural disaster became a manmade disaster — a failure of government to look out for its own citizens.  And the storm laid bare a deeper tragedy that had been brewing for decades because we came to understand that New Orleans, like so many cities and communities across the country, had for too long been plagued by structural inequalities that left too many people, especially poor people, especially people of color, without good jobs or affordable health care or decent housing.  Too many kids grew up surrounded by violent crime, cycling through substandard schools where few had a shot to break out of poverty.  And so like a body weakened already, undernourished already, when the storm hit, there was no resources to fall back on.

In the podcast with Thad Allen that Arnold Bogis highlighted on Tuesday, the former Coast Guard Commandant remarked, “The event does not create the preconditions, and to the extent that preconditions exist, that erodes resiliency and your ability to deal with the problem, you’re going have the consequences of greater effect and greater magnitude.”

In addition to the preconditions noted by the President and the Admiral, I would highlight the structure of the electrical grid, fuel distribution systems, supply chains for food, pharmaceuticals, medical goods, and more.  The lower ninth ward did not have a functioning public water system for fourteen months after Katrina. What would be the situation in post-earthquake Los Angeles?  In the New Orleans region, as in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and in myriad locations along most major US waterways, dikes, levees, dams and other engineered structures have incrementally accumulated without much attention to potential interdependencies.  Dozens of dams my grandfather was instrumental in building more than sixty years ago have not been maintained and are an increasing hazard.

As the President suggests, many of our most troublesome preconditions are the result of neglect.  But others — even some referenced by Mr. Obama — are as likely to emerge from proactive and purposeful choices intended to enhance efficiency, economic productivity, and other generally perceived positives.

Does the Homeland Security mission include addressing preconditions?

Glance at the screen capture below.  This is from the White House website.  Click on ISSUES and this is what is displayed.  Does the distinction between “Top Issues” and “More” strike you as meaningful?

I suspect the headings were organized by a web-master rather than senior policy staff. But like an innocent (Freudian?) slip of the tongue, it’s interesting to consider.  I may even agree with the distinctions.  The “Top Issues” listed above have the potential to shape the strategic landscape.  Those listed under the first set of “More”, as usually conceived, are much more responses to problems that resist strategic shaping.

Much of my work tries to get Homeland Security more effectively engaged in preconditions.  Presidential Policy Directive 21 indicates:

The Federal Government shall work with critical infrastructure owners and operators and SLTT entities to take proactive steps to manage risk and strengthen the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure, considering all hazards that could have a debilitating impact on national security, economic stability, public health and safety, or any combination thereof. These efforts shall seek to reduce vulnerabilities, minimize consequences, identify and disrupt threats, and hasten response and recovery efforts related to critical infrastructure.

Later in the same PPD, we read:

The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide strategic guidance, promote a national unity of effort, and coordinate the overall Federal effort to promote the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. In carrying out the responsibilities assigned in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended, the Secretary of Homeland Security evaluates national capabilities, opportunities, and challenges in protecting critical infrastructure; analyzes threats to, vulnerabilities of, and potential consequences from all hazards on critical infrastructure; identifies security and resilience functions that are necessary for effective public-private engagement with all critical infrastructure sectors; develops a national plan and metrics, in coordination with SSAs and other critical infrastructure partners; integrates and coordinates Federal cross-sector security and resilience activities; identifies and analyzes key interdependencies among critical infrastructure sectors; and reports on the effectiveness of national efforts to strengthen the Nation’s security and resilience posture for critical infrastructure.

Several additional DHS roles are then listed.  Similar proactive language — authorities, as they are called — can be found in other statutes and executive actions. But whatever the authorities and occasional exception, the culture of Homeland Security remains more defensive…threat-oriented…reactive.

Preconditions persist and multiply.

Former Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen is fond of using that description of what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans.  Often he adds, “without the criminality.”

That is an important distinction.  It means that because it was a natural disaster rather than a terrorist attack, the federal government could not simply take control of the response.  Instead, there was an intricate dance of competing political pressures, interpretations, and interests at all levels of government.  Depending on one’s political leanings, it is easy now to lame blame on particular people over others.  What I think should be understood by all is that communication between the local, state, and federal governments fell apart at the very moment it was most needed.

I bring this up because Allen was interviewed on Juliette Kayyem’s latest podcast.  It is an interesting conversation on his recollections about the response to that catastrophe.

You can listen to it here: http://wgbhnews.org/post/thad-allen-hurricane-katrina-10-years-later

Thanks to the Alaska Dispatch News, here’s a transcript of the speech President Obama gave Monday evening (9PM Eastern) in Alaska.

The phrase “homeland security” was never uttered.  But I perceive a considerable connection.  One excerpt:

We also know the devastating consequences if the current trend lines continue.  That is not deniable.  And we are going to have to do some adaptation, and we are going to have to help communities be resilient, because of these trend lines we are not going to be able to stop on a dime.  We’re not going to be able to stop tomorrow. 

But if those trend lines continue the way they are, there’s not going to be a nation on this Earth that’s not impacted negatively.  People will suffer.  Economies will suffer.  Entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems.  More drought; more floods; rising sea levels; greater migration; more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict. 

That’s one path we can take.  The other path is to embrace the human ingenuity that can do something about it.  This is within our power.  This is a solvable problem if we start now.