Welcome to Your Security

  Welcome to the War on Terror. This isn’t your grandfather’s great patriotic war or your parent’s Cold War; it is our own special brand, a Simmer War. This is a war not to hot but not too cold, it is just warm enough to send everyone into a panic. 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. This system is not working and there needs to be a change.

  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. A color system which 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 changing from yellow to orange causes panic in the early stages of the implementation of the color system. 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 an effective method of terror caution. What we have now as a system of prevention and caution awareness is doing nothing on the part of alerting the everyday individual about the possibility. The color system does little more then create mass hysteria. The system is flawed in its nature. Instead of alerting the public on possible actions which can be taken to prevent attacks, the system makes the citizen helpless.

  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 by the citizenry. 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 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to reach the success of the CD system fifty years earlier. The CD was absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security 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, such as underground shelters, 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, instead of 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, and the ability to give the citizen a part in participation in his or her national security will prove to be the vital tool on the war on terror.