Wrong Questions Produce Wrong Answers : Part 2

Our Own Worst Enemy: Asking the Right Questions About Security to Protect You, Your Family, and America
by Colonel Randall J. Larsen USAF

(Page 2 of 5)

When I use the term al Qaeda in this book, I am not limiting it to the terrorist group commanded by Osama bin Laden. I use it to describe a loose affiliation of fanatical Islamic terrorists. They go by many names: Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), Islamic Jihad (West Bank and Gaza), Al-Gama al-Islamiyya (Egypt), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami (Pakistan), and the Armed Islamic Group (Algeria). The State Department identifies two dozen Islamic terrorist organizations. Some operations are under the strict command and control of bin Laden, such as the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, and 9/11. Other operations, such as the attacks in Bali, Spain, and London, were planned and executed by al Qaeda affiliates. These affiliates endorse al Qaeda religious guidance that allows for the killing of innocents during a holy war. Their theory is that "true innocents" will go directly to heaven when killed in a jihad. (According to bin Laden, Americans can never be true innocents since our tax dollars pay for the war against al Qaeda.) Some of these affiliates receive training and even limited funding from al Qaeda, while others operate independently except for moral support and religious guidance.

The struggle against al Qaeda is just one aspect of homeland security. If we killed or captured every member, we could declare victory in the war against al Qaeda, but we would continue to face threats to our homeland due to twenty-first-century technology and hatred that is driven by territorial disputes, economic inequalities, oil, water, politics, and religion.

Once we have covered the fundamentals in the first five chapters, the remainder of the book will synthesize the many aspects of homeland security into discussions of:

• this new security environment, and the resulting need for new thinking, new rules, and new organizations

• the responsibilities of corporate America

• preparing your local community

• preparing your family

We must change the way we think about security, and this means learning to ask the right questions. Unfortunately, just like that Secret Service agent at the White House, many of our leaders in government and industry, and citizens in our local communities, continue to ask the wrong questions, to the detriment of our national security. Let me provide a few examples.

Since 9/11, many in Congress and the administration have asked the question: "What can we do to ensure that al Qaeda does not smuggle a nuclear weapon into the U.S. through one of our ports?"

Wrong Question

It is highly improbable that a terrorist organization would attempt to deliver a nuclear weapon to the U.S. in a shipping container, and even if it did, it is highly unlikely that we would detect it - no matter how much we spend on radiological scanning devices. Furthermore, even if we did detect it in a U.S. or foreign port, the terrorists would still have achieved success. Once al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization demonstrates the capability to acquire nuclear weapons, the entire international security equation changes. Life will never be the same for you, your children, or your grandchildren. Even if terrorists explode a device on a ship in mid-ocean, they will have made their point. The explosion will be followed shortly thereafter by the message: "Do what we say or the next three nuclear explosions will be in U.S. cities."

The correct question then is not how we can prevent a nuclear weapon from being smuggled into one of our ports, or how we can prevent a mushroom cloud over an American city. The correct question becomes, "How do we prevent a terrorist organization from becoming a nuclear power?" The answer to that question is far different from the answers that dominate the debate and the spending priorities of the Bush administration and Congress.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is another prime example of asking the wrong questions. We all look to the federal government in times of disaster, and hope it will do a far better job than its response to Katrina. But the federal government should not shoulder all the blame; state and local government failed as well. According to Rich Cooper, the former business liaison director at the Department of Homeland Security, sixteen months before Katrina, the federal government gave $7 million (of your tax dollars) to New Orleans to build an emergency operations center (EOC). Government auditors and reporters haven't been able to find where the money was spent, but it was not used to build an emergency operations center. Had the operations center existed, officials at the federal, state, and local levels would have had a far better picture of what was going on in the hours and days immediately following the hurricane's landfall. This is called situational awareness, and without it, there is no way for leaders to make the right decisions.

During the congressional investigation into the poor response to Katrina by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, this lack of situational awareness at the local, state, and federal levels became painfully clear. When the chief of the Homeland Security Operations Center, a retired Marine general, was asked why he didn't sound the alarm within the federal government that the levees had failed and New Orleans was flooding, he said, "I based my decision on what I assessed to be the most reliable information available." As it turns out, this information came from two sources: an Army Corps of Engineer colonel, new to the New Orleans area, who was in an underground bunker miles away from the critical levees; and a cable news TV report showing tipsy residents standing on a completely dry Bourbon Street (the highest area in New Orleans), smiling and saying, "We dodged a bullet."

Copyright © 2007 by Randall Larsen

About the Author

Colonel Randall J. Larsen, USAF (Ret)is the director of the Institute for Homeland Security, a senior associate at the Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the cohost of public radio's Homeland Security: Inside and Out. Colonel Larsen served for thirty-two years in the Army and Air Force. His assignments ranged from duty as a nineteen-year-old Cobra pilot in the 101ST Airborne Division, with whom he flew 400 combat missions in Vietnam, to command of America's fleet of VIP aircraft at Andrews AFB, MD, and chairman of the Department of Military Strategy and Operations at the National War College.