#security state

The Department of Homeland Security’s first problem is its name. Mainstream American political thought long celebrated the United States as a multicultural nation, one that forged a common civic identity among people from disparate cultures. Except for the Native Americans, this country is no one’s “homeland,” a word that evokes the blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism of the Old World.

“The word ‘homeland’ is a strange word,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mused to his staff in one of his infamous “snowflake” memos in February 2001. “‘Homeland’ Defense sounds more German than American. Also, it smacks of isolationism, which I am uncomfortable with.”

But after the September 11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration rallied around the phrase to describe its anti-terrorism efforts, reportedly pulling it from a 1998 defense report that called for an “increased emphasis on homeland defense.” The White House established an umbrella Office of Homeland Security under former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, then proposed the creation of a massive, Cabinet-level department by the same name to oversee the nation’s domestic security.

It’s now been more than 15 years since the U.S. government reorganized itself in response to a terrorist attack committed by 19 people. International terrorism’s threat to the United States has largely receded: Al-Qaeda is a remnant of its former self, and the Islamic State has been largely defeated in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the bloated Department of Homeland Security turned into a boondoggle—an opinion shared across the political spectrum for years.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, in a paper for the libertarian Cato Institute, David Rittgers argued that the department’s unusually broad mandate is a recipe for waste and inefficiency. “This arrangement has not enhanced the government’s competence,” he wrote. “Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics.” Matt Mayer, a Homeland Security official under President George W. Bush, argued in 2015 that DHS has too much responsibility. “It goes without saying that I observed up-close the dysfunction, turf battles, and inherent limitations in an entity that does so much,” he wrote in Reason magazine. “These problems are exacerbated due to the fact that, in many cases, the activities DHS engages in require enormous coordination with entities embedded in other federal departments.”

Creating such a department wasn’t a priority for the Bush administration, even initially after 9/11. A Washington Post report on DHS’s early days noted that its most determined early proponent was Joe Lieberman, then a Democratic senator from Connecticut, who faced resistance from administration officials like Vice President Dick Cheney. But in June 2002, the Bush administration endorsed the calls for a cabinet-level department to handle homeland security, an announcement that came as Bush officials were facing tough questions on Capitol Hill about what clues they had missed about the imminent attacks.