It's Accountability Time

The power and fury of Hurricane Katrina has momentarily pushed to the side the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. However, to fully understand the ramifications of Hurricane Katrina, and the failings on the part of our government to protect us from harm, we must not forget that before Katrina there was an event we were told “forever changed the world we live in.”

September 11, 2001 represented not only a dark day for New York City and its citizens, but all of America and indeed the world. In retrospect, the gravest damage inflicted by that act of terrorism wasn't the human suffering and material loss, but rather the serious assault on the very soul of the United States by those who used the horrific events of 9/11 for political purpose.

This “assault” came in the form of actions on the part of the Bush administration, a cowed Congress, and a compliant media that worked hand in glove to spin the events of September 11, 2001 into a storm of hype and fear that exploited an already traumatized people. This conditioned them to accept at face value any characterization of events, no matter how far removed from fact, as well as any remedy put forward as a solution, no matter what the cost to fundamental notions of liberty and justice as set forth by the Constitution.

From the smoke and ashes of 9/11 came legislation in the form of the so-called “Patriot Act,” which represented a frontal assault by its conservative drafters on the very Constitution that defined a United States of America worth dying for. Congress voted unanimously to enact this legislation without even bothering to read it, since to vote against the Patriot Act was to open oneself to charges of being unpatriotic.

Congress went further, legislating into existence a new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, which at its best provided Americans with a nonsensical color-coded system for mandating national levels of fear, and at its worst created the illusion not only of an ever-present terrorist threat, but also the notion that the federal government, in its role as “Big Brother,” was there to protect us from all evil.

For nearly four years America proceeded down this path of self-induced ignorance and bliss, reassured by our Republican president and Republican-controlled Congress, as well as a compliant media. We were repeatedly told that a threat to our security loomed on the horizon, a threat so grave we as a people needed to cede our liberties to a benevolent federal authority that guaranteed the security of a nation we now called our “homeland.”

The newly erected Department of Homeland Security absorbed the various departments and agencies that had previously performed specialized tasks, such as border security, customs, and emergency response, under a single monolithic entity to serve as a guarantor of our collective protection.

Billions of dollars were spent in the name of “homeland security.” But under the Bush administration, homeland security really meant the domestic defense against terrorism, and even in this case the emphasis was placed on pre-emptive law enforcement (i.e., implementing the provisions of the Patriot Act) rather than actual response to an act of terror (i.e., providing aid and comfort to the victims of an attack).

Little heed was given to real threats to the collective security of our nation, such as tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes and floods, and the impact these would have on the infrastructure and integrity of the nation. These real threats were never given a color-coded system for the purpose of hyping them to the American people; they were instead pushed into the background by a White House and Congress addicted to the legislative and electoral simplicity of fear of the unknown -- terrorism.