Theater of War: Portrait of a Homeland Security State [Photo Slideshow Included]

By Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet. Posted November 22, 2008.

There's nothing imaginary about the money that goes into these exercises. Berman's photographs underscore the fact that counterterrorism is big business.

"[The staff of Fort Polk] are looking for more work; anything goes. The point I'm trying to make is that it has become a real business."

Indeed, there's a lot of money available for homeland security, so many people have a vested interest in dramatizing the threat -- and many of the subjects in Homeland have a vested interest in maximizing their drama, whether it's the officers at Fort Polk sniffing out funding opportunities, a local police department beefing up its SWAT teams, or a Neighborhood Watch captain writing grants to hire his friends to patrol his small town for terrorists.

Berman recalls a conversation she had with a gun dealer in Orlando, Fla., who was trying to sell very long sniper rifles to a civilian police department in the name of counterterrorism. She asked why the police would need such a weapon. The gun dealer responded by presenting a highly complex scenario involving terrorists on a boat filled with explosives in the river preparing to ram into some seaside structure. In that case, he asked Berman, wouldn't she want the police officers to have extra-long sniper rifles?

"How do you answer that question? You've got to answer, 'I want one weapon; I want five weapons!' If the answer no, you're a traitor. The point is why ask that question? Is that a valid question?"

Of course, if you're going to simulate terror, it's important to document the artifice exhaustively, to convince everyone that more money is needed to simulate bigger threats.

"The military was photographing everything," Berman says of another training exercise she photographed for the book. "They had crews with really good video cameras and really good still cameras photographing everything so they could show Congress -- this is what they told me -- to get more money for training."

The book also shows how homeland security is blurring the lines between the military and the police. A number of photographs show police officers participating in exercises that seem more suited to the Special Forces than to civilian policing.

"The SWAT units look like, and are armed like and behave like, paramilitary forces," Berman says. Even police dogs are getting makeovers. In the book, we see a Florida women's group beaming at K-9 unit "Santo," resplendent in his new Kevlar body armor emblazoned with the word "SHERIFF."

There's a harrowing sequence of photos showing police SWAT recruits barely keeping their nostrils above flowing water in an agility exercise -- images that evoke waterboarding.

Ultimately, Homeland traces the logic of a massive positive feedback loop in which fear spurs performance and performance spurs fear. Fear of a terrorist attack spurs ever more elaborate simulations of doomsday scenarios in the name of practice and preparation. These massive public spectacles dramatize the threat and make relatively unlikely events hyper-salient in people's minds. Participating in, or just paying for, ever more elaborate practice exercises is one way to temporarily assuage the anxiety.

Berman argues that the security theater overkill is part of a culture where everything seems to exist for our entertainment. There are many images in the book of Americans at the park and the beach gaping at the spectacle of a military fly-by. They could be watching a summer blockbuster movie.

"There's some added value in seeing yourself as a target," says Berman. "If you feel like a terrorist is trying to kill you all the time, you must be a very important person."

Homeland by Nina Berman is published by Trolley Books $49.95, www.trolleybooks.com

See more stories tagged with: iraq, homeland, homeland security, nina berman, photojournalism

Lindsay Beyerstein is a New York writer blogging at majikthise.typepad.com

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