This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
It was more than 20 years ago, but I still remember the shock I felt when the word "homeland" first entered our culture in a big way. That was soon after the 9/11 attacks and, in the end, it would be attached to what became known as the Department of Homeland Security. For me and I wasn't alone that word had a distinctly un-American ring to it. It brought to my mind heimat, the equivalent term the Nazis used for Germany. True, the word had been used before here. Only days earlier, for instance, Congressman Ike Skelton (D-MO) had plugged the creation of "a comprehensive homeland security strategy." Nonetheless, that was rare indeed and barely noticed until, six days later, the World Trade Center towers in New York City were destroyed.
Still, homeland? Really? The United States of America? Unfortunately, in retrospect, as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, reminds us today, there was something both eerily strange and all too grimly appropriate in the use of that word for the Department of Homeland Security. It should have been (but sadly wasn't) a reminder that there was something truly out of the ordinary about organizing what, as Mazzarino suggests, would become a second Pentagon, thanks to the hijacking of three American planes by 19 mostly Saudi terrorists in the name of al-Qaeda. That small terror outfit was, of course, run by a rich Saudi named Osama bin Laden. He would, I suspect, have been thrilled to death (so to speak) to have goaded this country into both launching a series of disastrous conflicts under the label of the Global War on Terror that would, in fact, spread terrorism across the Greater Middle East and Africa. My best guess: he would have been no less thrilled to have convinced us to pour yet more money that could have been spent so much better elsewhere into "national security."
More than 20 years later, I think it's safe to say that the "homeland" is anything but secure and not because of Saudi terrorists either. These days, the terror, as Mazzarino suggests, is all too close to home. Tom
The Pentagon We Don't Think About
A New Perspective on the Department of Homeland Security
A relative of mine, who works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) compiling data on foreigners entering the United States, recently posted a curious logo on his Facebook profile: a white Roman numeral three on a black background surrounded by 13 white stars. For those who don't know what this symbol stands for, it represents the "Three Percenters," a group that the Anti-Defamation League has identified as an anti-government militia. Its members have a record of violent criminal attacks and strikingly partisan activity, including arrests and guilty pleas in connection with the bombing of a Minnesota mosque in 2017 and appearances as "guards," carrying assault-style weaponry, at several pro-Trump rallies. Six of its members have been charged with plotting to assault the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
When my husband, a Naval officer of nearly 20 years, saw this symbol on a family member's Facebook page, he pointed out to me that, despite the Hatch Act, created to ensure nonpartisanship among federal workers, DHS employees are not always held accountable for exercising "free speech" that would violate that law. The Three Percenters claim that they're protesting government tyranny. The roman numeral itself refers to a debunked claim that only 3% of Americans in the original 13 colonies took up arms against the British in the Revolutionary War.
What does it mean that an employee of the Department of yes! Homeland Security can openly and proudly promote a homegrown militia whose members have threatened and attacked American lawmakers and police? Sadly enough, this fits all too well an agency that national security expert Erik Dahl of the Costs of War Project recently described as looking the other way in the face of rising far-right extremism. That includes anti-government, white-supremacist, and anti-Semitic groups, armed and otherwise. Such right-wing militias and extremist outfits, as Dahl makes clear, have killed an increasing number of people in this country since the 9/11 attacks, significantly more than groups inspired by foreign Islamist organizations like al-Qaeda. And yet, in both its public statements and policies, the domestic agency created after the 9/11 attacks to keep this country "secure" has consistently focused on the latter, while underestimating and often ignoring the former.
How U.S. Security Changed after 9/11
The Department of Homeland Security was quite literally a product of 9/11 and so was formed in a political climate of nearly unwavering support for anything Congress or the White House proposed to combat extremist violence. It officially arrived on the scene just weeks after the 9/11 attacks as the "Office of Homeland Security" when President George W. Bush appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as its first director. By 2002, now a "department," it would bring together 22 different government agencies, including the Transportation and Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Its mission, as stated in a proposal by President Bush, was to "protect our homeland" against invisible enemies that can strike with a wide variety of weapons." In the end, that new department would represent the largest reorganization of government since World War II. Though few here think of it that way, it would prove to be a second Pentagon and, over the years, would be funded in a similarly profligate fashion.
Under such circumstances, you won't be surprised to learn that its creation also led to a striking amount of redundancy in the national security establishment. In 2004, Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide the president with an overview of all intelligence efforts. According to Dahl, the director of national intelligence and the organizations he or she oversees are supposed to stand on the front lines of combating violent attacks on U.S. soil. Law enforcement groups like the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (under the FBI) have, in fact, thwarted the largest number of potential terrorist attacks since 9/11 and, at the moment, seem to be focused on the most significant threats to this country, which are all too internal. For example, a January 2022 joint statement by senior FBI and Justice Department officials warned that "the threat posed by domestic violent extremism and hate crimes is on the rise" and that FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists have more than doubled since the spring of 2020.
In February 2020, even Christopher Wray, President Trump's FBI director, testified before the House Judiciary Committee that violent extremists targeting people based on their race or ethnicity "were the primary source of ideologically-motivated lethal incidents and violence in 2018 and 2019, and have been considered the most lethal of all domestic extremist movements since 2001." Of the 16 (unsuccessful) terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in 2020, 14 were prevented by police or most often FBI agents or those from Joint Terrorism Task Forces. For example, in March 2020, the FBI shot and killed a man in Missouri while attempting to arrest him. He was under investigation for planning to bomb a hospital to protest his city's Covid-19 lockdown measures.
To be sure, there have also been threats from foreign terrorist organizations and those who act at their behest. Take, for example, the December 6, 2019, attack of a Saudi-born military trainee directed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He managed to kill three sailors at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. According to Dahl, since 9/11, there have been 146 thwarted attacks planned by foreign terrorist groups or those inspired by them here. The vast majority were prevented by law enforcement sting operations or tips from the public.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
