At War: Homeland Sideshow.(Brief Article)

Comparing his action to Harry Truman's creation of the National Security Council and consolidation of the military at the dawn of the Cold War, President Bush proposed a new cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security, better to protect America from future 9/11 attacks. Bush proposes to bring together free-standing entities (like the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and pieces of existing departments (such as the Coast Guard from Transportation, the INS from Justice, and Customs and Secret Service from Treasury) under one umbrella, with a $37 billion budget and almost 170,000 employees.

One improvement, right off the bat, would be to name the new department the Department of Defense, and rename the DoD the Department of War, an honorable name stretching from the tenure of Henry Knox to World War II. An accurate name, too, since we are now at war.

Sen. Kennedy's off-the-cuff reaction, that the reassembly of existing functions was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, was doubly infelicitous -- why does the senator think America is sinking? why is Teddy Kennedy using aquatic imagery? -- but agnosticism is in order. It is sensible to put in one place all the people immediately responsible for controlling the borders, and those who cross over them -- the INS, Customs, and the Coast Guard. Tom Ridge, head of the cucurrent Office of Homeland Security, called this "one face at the border." Even more sensible would be making sure that that face is stern and beady-eyed. Neither our consular agents abroad, nor the ...