Wrong Questions Produce Wrong Answers : Part 5

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

(Page 5 of 5)

Bioterrorism is one of the greatest threats we will face in the twenty-first century. One of the most notable successes of the federal government's biodefense preparedness efforts is something called a Push Pack. Today, if the federal government even suspected that a bio-attack had taken place in your community, one or more Push Packs, each containing 97,000 pounds of medical supplies, would be delivered to the affected area. The feds would get high marks for doing their job, but unfortunately, few communities today are properly prepared to distribute the life-saving antibiotics once they arrive. However, corporate America and local communities can solve this problem - all they have to do is posse up. Doing so can make the difference between a manageable crisis and a national catastrophe.

A Push Pack posse is a response effort, but we have also created posses for prevention. One of the most significant and successful examples of a prevention posse is the Highway Watch program created by the Transportation Security Administration. More than 300,000 transportation workers have been trained to look for and report suspicious behavior on our nation's highways. This posse includes a wide range of commercial drivers, from those in eighteen-wheel semis to small-package delivery personnel in step vans, to school bus drivers. Who better to spot something unusual or out of place than the people within the industry?

Other prevention posses also have no costs to taxpayers. The vast, heavily wooded perimeter of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas (the nation's fourth largest), is patrolled, on horseback, by a part-time posse of eight hundred riders.

Since 9/11, some communities have created both prevention and response posses, but many Americans are failing to prepare and are hoping instead that the government will take care of them in the event of a crisis. Most individuals understand that hope is not a successful strategy for investing in the stock market, and likewise, you should understand that hope is not an effective strategy for protecting your family, your local community, and your economic well-being from man-made and natural disasters. The first step in developing an effective strategy is learning how to ask the right questions, a skill I used to teach at America's premier graduate school for military officers.

While serving as the chairman of the Department of Military Strategy and Operations at the National War College, I had the opportunity to assist in the graduate education of many of America's most promising military leaders. These students were Army, Air Force, and Marine colonels and Navy and Coast Guard captains. They had commanded battalions, squadrons, and ships in peace and war. We did not provide them a year of graduate education on national security studies to prepare them for their next assignment. Our mission was to prepare them for a decade down the road, when they would be serving in the most senior positions within the Department of Defense.

It would have been impractical to provide them with the answers to national security problems, due to the limited shelf life of such solutions in this rapidly changing field. The mission of the National War College is to teach these officers how to think about national security - not what. (I wish I could say the same for my daughter's professors of government and international relations.) General Colin Powell and Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft are graduates of the National War College, and both will tell you that this was where they learned to ask the right questions. That is my goal in writing this book - to help you ask the right questions about homeland security. Determining the correct questions is the first step in improving the security of your family, local community, business and economic well-being, and your country.

I will provide you with some of the answers, but only those that address the more practical issues of preparedness. This knowledge comes from my twelve years of experience in the field of homeland security, three decades of military service, and three years in the corporate world as the vice president and corporate officer of a high-visibility company. Whether you are a member of Congress, a federal, state, or local government official, a corporate executive, or a parent, it is critically important that you be prepared.

A young reporter once asked Albert Einstein what his theory of relativity had changed. He said, "Everything . . . everything except the way people think." We must change the way we think about securing our homeland. Throughout the Cold War, national security was the purview of those in Washington, D.C. Homeland security, on the other hand, while still involving Washington, extends all the way from the Oval Office to the front office to your kitchen table. When you finish this book, you will know what questions to ask, and you will have a far better understanding of the practical issues and the actions you must take. These actions will not require a large investment of your time or money, but the return on your investment will be substantial.

You could turn directly to the chapters concerning what to do for your business, local community, and family; however, you will be far more effective, and far better prepared, if you first learn the big picture. It will help you understand what must be done and why, because when it comes to homeland security, Americans tend to worry too much, and often about the wrong things.

If we continue down this road, refusing to see the whole chessboard and failing to formulate the right questions, then the greatest threat this nation could face will be realized: We will have become our own worst enemy. We must avoid this at all costs, and to that end, let us begin with perspective.

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.