The Democratic Party is missing a golden opportunity to beat the GOP on homeland security issues. Although the 2004 election hinged on Americans' concerns about domestic terrorism, the Democrats typically give the subject unimaginative or predictable responses: Spend more money for first responders, roll back the USA Patriot Act and plug the holes in America's very holey defenses against evildoers. There is a much more attractive option: Seize upon homeland security to reshape social and economic priorities.

The Bush administration strategy for homeland security that has gradually emerged from the trauma of 9/11 emphasizes preventive deterrence against Muslim communities in the United States, protection of dangerous facilities and enhanced capacity for police, firefighters and health professionals to respond to a terrorist attack. President Bush has consistently opted for "hardening" American society and its economy, the domestic counterpart of his anti-terrorism campaign worldwide. The costs – in dollars, values and vulnerabilities – are very high, however, and the actual protection bought is uncertain.

The hardening of society began with a crackdown on Muslims in America. Terrorist-related prosecutions, harassment of Muslims and other Arab Americans and surveillance and disruption in these communities has included at least 200,000 FBI interviews, "special registration" for thousands of Muslim men, as well as hundreds of deportations. All of this has produced no evidence of a domestic terrorist threat lurking in American society. In fact, the 9/11 Commission report could uncover no such plot, and the nearly 400 indictments by the Justice Department are a parade of inconsequential misdemeanors or actions unrelated to al Qaeda. This is not just about civil liberties – there is a larger danger that Muslims are being targeted by federal authorities as a permanent internal threat. We are witnessing the re-emergence of a cold war culture in a new U.S. security apparatus and compliant social and political institutions.

This is not to say there is no threat, of course. America still faces a risk of attacks by al Qaeda from abroad, and the danger is growing as a result of the Iraq war.

The anti-Muslim juggernaut also twists the role of society itself in protecting ourselves from terrorism. Alienating and isolating Muslims, Arab Americans, South Asians and other immigrant communities is foolish on moral grounds and as a means to achieve antiterrorism goals. What we should be fostering from these communities is cooperation, not alienation.

But the Bush administration is intentionally fostering mistrust and anxiety. Through the endless stream of higher alerts and its alarmist rhetoric, it is nurturing an ethos of fear as civic virtue. It sponsors, for example, programs in schools and civic education that emphasize being alert to the possibility of terrorists in one's community. As Steven Heydemann and Amaney Jamal point out in a new study for the Social Science Research Council, "Through such initiatives, the Corporation for National and Community Service and other government agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations linked to these agencies, are integrating norms of homeland security as a defining element in the broader relationship between citizens and government. It is being used to reframe commitments to civic education, with a special focus on bringing homeland security themes into K-12 curricula in public schools. It is also becoming more prominent in the governance of other activities long associated with the vitality of civic life in the United States, including volunteering, community service, and charitable giving."

A recent example is the expensive "public discourse project" of a new organization promoted by 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton: the America Prepared Campaign, which pushes an urgent, family regimen to "be ready" for terrorist attacks.

So Bush's version of homeland security – defined as a need to be watchful, suspicious and defensive – is the core value being promoted in federal education and other social initiatives. It seeps into popular culture, most notably in the odious television hit 24, and combines neatly with right-wing religious ideologies. This is, to be sure, consistent: Bush is spending a colossal amount of money to toughen airport security, harden targets like the Washington Monument and intimidate the Arab world with military force, measures that might produce marginally more security. But along the way, he is insinuating values that breed mistrust of others at home and abroad.

Democrats have largely bought into the Bush policy, though in a lighter version. The sum of John Kerry's domestic security proposals last year was to plug holes in defenses (air cargo, ports, nuclear plants, etc.) and spend more money on first responders. But there is a much more attractive and assertive set of policies available that match up well with progressive priorities. American society could be activated in ways that integrate security with a new provision of social goods, providing tangible benefits for Americans while minimizing the nation's vulnerabilities to al Qaeda and its successors.

Progressives are caught in a bind because no one knows whether the threat of terrorism is potentially catastrophic. How to respond? Instead of advocating the endless social and physical hardening that gains us little and incurs enormous costs – and looks like parroting of the White House – we could pursue policies that minimize risk and maximize the ability to respond. Along the way, other benefits would accrue, benefits that fulfill progressive goals of equity, community and sustainability.

Consider the nation's energy system. Today it is a complex of petroleum-based technologies and nuclear power plants, all of which are vulnerable in some way – equally true for the petrochemicals that are overused in manufacturing and agriculture. The conventional answer to these vulnerabilities is hardening: literally, as with cement barricades and containers, or via stepped-up surveillance and other security measures. Few if any political leaders ask if the system itself needs rethinking. A large-scale investment in renewable energy and conservation, for example, would yield results that might be more expensive than fossil fuels are currently, but would bring many safety and security benefits, and less pollution. (According to reports of the testimony of the captured al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of his strategies was to steal gasoline delivery trucks and blow them up.) It would also address the petroleum dependency that is a root of the terrorism threat.

The most hazardous energy facilities are located in places where poor and working-class people live: They are most vulnerable, and they are least well protected. Vulnerabilities are not evenly distributed in society. When catastrophes strike, the poor suffer most. Eric Klinenberg's recent book Heat Wave shows graphically how a heat wave in Chicago most severely affected the poor and elderly; the tsunami in Asia is another grisly example. Redressing this imbalance, and improving society's overall resilience to terrorism, would include upgrading public health systems (for example, more neighborhood clinics), improving mass transit, developing alternatives to hazardous materials and their transport, and a myriad of other infrastructure reforms that would require social agreement to work optimally. Having local solar arrays or windmills to produce power is one example: Safe and clean energy should trump aesthetic concerns, but in any event would be subject to strong citizen participation. (This was Amory Lovins' insight more than a quarter-century ago, including its counterterrorism logic.) The benefits outweigh the sacrifices, however, and along the way we would garner an increase of trust in public institutions – the sense of equity and fair play – that are essential to a long-term antiterrorism effort.

That this vast reconfiguration of how we derive and use fuel, chemicals, etc. would be costly is an understatement. Rejiggering the energy system alone would reach into the trillions of dollars, and would have to include alternatives to the internal-combustion engine. (This will have to be done within 50 to 75 years anyway, because of declining global oil production.) Since 9/11, however, homeland security expenditures, both public and private, have totaled something like a half-trillion dollars, and this does not include the costs of military interventions in the Persian Gulf region since 1990.

Apart from new jobs in the security industries, these expenditures have produced little in the way of public goods or "social capital." We do not have better social or physical infrastructure, better schools or a stronger sense of justice. We do have more encumbrances, more mistrust, more anxiety – possibly greater security – but few if any outcomes for a better society.

Consider another example of creating social goods with enhanced security: improving the public health system. Building local public clinics to deal effectively with infectious diseases, immediate and unencumbered access for the uninsured, vaccination programs, attention to children and youth, and so on would provide protection in these specific areas, and would also create a new opportunity to reach people in the underserved areas that are most exposed to the risk of disasters and social dislocations of all kinds. Such clinics serve as educational platforms as well as health providers. And, in the process, they would demonstrate a level of caring in society that is now spotty at best.

In the unlikely event of a biological-weapon or similar attack, a layer of protection would be in place, one that not only could provide health services but would be an empowering link in an essential social network. Consider how anthrax or other "bioterror" diseases manifest themselves – often with only gradually worsening symptoms – and how reluctant uninsured people are to go to a hospital, even when they are ill. A bolstered public health system – nationwide, connected, technically sophisticated and trained for multiple threats, terrorism included – would be a layer of defense; it would demonstrate to the public that the government is serious about reducing vulnerabilities; and it would have manifold benefits for combating other diseases and social ills.

Reducing vulnerabilities does not mean al Qaeda cannot strike America. By reducing the number of potential catastrophe targets, however, and by bolstering the social and physical infrastructure of response, the possibilities for suffering a debilitating loss are reduced. But if reducing vulnerabilities simply means hardening, with no effort to decrease vulnerabilities, and social response is based purely on fear rather than positive inducements, then it will be difficult to sustain attention to and investment in homeland defenses. The "securitization" of America will remain expensive and paranoid, while the most important elements of improving security through social organization will be forfeited.

A reconstruction of energy choices, public health, mass transit and trust in government seems a daunting task. But a precedent for undertaking such vast social change is visible in "how we have come to manage the safety imperative over the past century," as Stephen Flynn, a former White House security adviser, notes in his book America the Vulnerable. Enormous strides were made in everything from flame-retardant children's clothing to food safety to the handling of hazardous materials in manufacturing. The economy adapted, and in fact new industries and jobs were created to provide this added layer of safety. Over this same period, safety became a broader social concern – safety in schools, safe access for the handicapped, safety in driving, safety in the natural environment, safety in relationships. While this was hardly a seamless triumph, the safety issue was engaged broadly, in part because ordinary people could see beyond the costs and inconveniences to the benefits for themselves and their communities. As Flynn notes, "If we are smart in how we construct a security deterrent, we will achieve other benefits."

Thinking about homeland security in this same way would give progressives a decided edge in the debate about how best to protect Americans in the age of global terrorism. Does America want to deal with vulnerabilities arising from its petroleum facilities? Then get serious about reducing petroleum dependencies. Does America want to have a truly effective first-responder system? Then get serious about dispersing and upgrading public health networks. Does America want to enhance trust in the public institutions needed to combat terrorism? Then get serious about building public institutions that deserve respect, provide services, protect civil liberties and expand public goods.

Every war – indeed, every great national challenge – has not only demanded sacrifice but has reordered social relations and yielded new public goods in return. World War II, for example, brought the GI Bill, advances in racial integration and other such rewards. It is worth examining that tradition and reinventing it as a galvanizing core of a progressive antiterrorism agenda.

The war against Iraq is on the road to failure in its most important, durable objective: to transform this construct of British imperialism, Baathist oppression, and American fantasies into a willing replica of Western democracy.

The results of the war cannot be measured by the U.S. military capacity to control Baghdad, occupy the entire country, and eradicate the odious Saddam Hussein regime. Discovering chemical and biological weapons may also be a trophy of the war. But the key goal -- articulated time and again by the Bush administration, supportive Democrats, and even some hawkish progressives -- has been to liberalize Iraq, thereby setting an example for nearby Muslim countries and altering the Middle East forever. But because of the way both the war is being conducted and the plans for postwar Iraq are designed, this vision of a democratic oasis in the desert of Muslim despotism is appearing more and more a mirage.

The fantasy of the good hegemon bringing liberation to the Iraqi people is being shattered first by events on the ground. The resistence in the south, the delay of the relief effort, the uncertain reception granted to the liberators, and the deep supply of contenders for the hearts and minds (and souls) of Iraq's majority Shi'ite population make for a very dispiriting specter for American warriors. Reports of the casualties from Baghdad and Basra are especially troubling.

The deprivations of war, the civilian deaths, the ruined lives, the smoldering cityscapes will not soon be forgotten, and, for the locals, who fired the weapons is practically irrelevant. The war planners did not count on this, we are now often told, and the struggle through the news media to assign blame to Saddam loyalists for war crimes and dirty tactics scarcely matters outside the precincts of Fox News and CNN. The fact that the United States started the war that is visiting havoc on the people of Iraq is the central fact shaping the social narrative that will guide politics in the south for the foreseeable future. The longer the fighting and deprivation last, of course, the sturdier and darker that narrative becomes.

This disquiet in the Iraqi Shi'ite population is not inert. Among those oppressed by the Baghdad regime are the Muslim clerics who finally see their main chance to liberate their people on their own terms. They look very similar to the fearsome ayatollahs of Iran that drove Presidents Reagan and Bush the Elder to embrace and support Saddam in the 1980s. Today, twenty years after supplying money, intelligence, military equipment, and political blessings to Saddam -- saving his regime in the brutal eight-year war with Iran -- many of the same decision-makers in Washington are opening the door to Shiite militancy. The Ayatollah al-Hakim, with his 15,000-strong Badr Brigade of well-trained Iraqis at the ready, waits across the river to re-enter history in his sacred homeland. He may do so brashly, inviting an American military reprisal, or he may wait until the occupiers have gone home and then move easily into the scarred terrain of his youth. Then we will see the hero's welcome "our boys" so unfairly were denied.

Nor is al-Hakim the only contender for Iraqi loyalties. There will be others -- clan leaders, for example, or rivals among religious outliers and former military men. Reports of an active presence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is Sunni, also present a sobering notion for those who will govern Baghdad.

This scenario is all the more disconcerting if seen alongside the Pentagon's postwar planning. While close-lipped and probably scrambling to adjust to the less-than-celebratory climate in Iraq, the planners by the Potomac have designed governance to ensure that security and civil order are the premium objectives of the first months and years. Shadow ministers from Rumsfeld's stable will govern behind Iraqi puppets. Even the State Department's suggestions for these consuls -- former ambassadors who know a little about the Arab world -- were rejected by the Secretary of War.

The Iraqi exile groups that the U.S. government carefully nurtured for a decade, notably the rapacious businessman Ahmed Challabi (whose habits of embezzlement are a recurring joke among Iraqi ex-pats), may be credible interlocutors for the transition, but this, too, smacks of imperialism: The British installed a king in the 1920s and did not even bother to find an Iraqi candidate. The record of returning exiles under the aegis of a foreign power is not encouraging.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is unlikely to have a role except, as always, to clean up behind the elephants' stampede; Tony Blair can explain that to the Labour conference this summer as he fights for his job.

The chief of civil administration is not to be an appointment of Kofi Annan but of Richard Perle: Michael Mobbs, a K Street law partner of Doug Feith, the undersecretary of defense, Perle crony, and member of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Cheney warrior caste. Mobbs has no qualifications for this exalted position apart from his political loyalty. His boss is Jay Garner, a retired army general working for a defense contractor, who now oversees the Pentagon office that includes humanitarian relief and reconstruction in addition to civil administration.

The military itself has expressed a strong preference not to have to police Iraq after the war, specifically hoping to avoid getting in the middle of what they call "green-on-green" violence. This is understandable, but the alternatives are not readily apparent, unless they can cajole the U.N. to send in some poor Salvadoran and Cambodian vets to put themselves in harm's way. Estimates of the needed force range from 50,000 to 200,000, a very large contingent. That after a few weeks or months they would be seen by Iraqis as occupiers is almost a certainty. But the United States, which has all but abandoned Afghanistan, cannot so easily cut loose from Iraq: The diplomatic, economic, and political stakes are too high.

So it is likely that U.S. administrators and soldiers will soon come into conflict with the Shiites who comprise 60 percent of Iraq. Whether this is peaceful political competition or something nastier is difficult to say. But sooner or later, the Shi'ite clergy will vie for power, not just in the south, but for the entire country. Only a strategy of divide and conquer will keep an Iran-friendly regime out of Baghdad. And that is precisely what the United States is doing.

Early reports of relief efforts indicate that the U.S. military is favoring certain Shi'ite clerics over others to distribute food and supplies and in essence to assume temporary posts as local administrators. Politicizing aid is a no-no in humanitarian circles, and the relief NGOs are squawking. But this is where the high-stakes game really begins, and the Bush administration is playing it hard, if fitfully.

Public disagreements between State and Defense about postwar Iraq signal very serious disputes in Washington, and, remarkably, demonstrate astonishing incompetence in planning. But in such a catfight the Pentagon has the sharpest claws. Hence, Challabi's presence in Nassariyeh in early April, well before other Shiite or Sunni exiles. Hence, the favoritism among Shi'ite clergy (Rumsfeld sternly warned that al-Hakim was being told to stay in Iran).

Creating many poles of Shiite influence in Iraq may be the best way to keep them out of power, but it's a big gamble. The fracas about who among Americans would be the shadow ministers is what's getting the attention of the news media, which always gravitates to the political squabble in the imperial city. What is far more important in the long run is how the Shi'ites are fragmented, what social and political forces might bring them together, how they interpret the war, their relations with Iran, and their view of Iraq as the political unit cobbled together by the British Foreign Office in the 1920s. The latter is pregnant with meaning for the Kurds in the north, who could again feel excluded from Iraqi governance and attempt to split away and give birth to their long-denied sovereign state, a move that would be aborted forcibly (and preemptively) by Turkey.

It is quite difficult to see how the Bush administration can prevent any or all of these effects of the war. Maintaining a pro-American regime -- and pro-Israeli, too, a goal articulated by U.S. officials with cheeky candor -- would seem to require a very long occupation while muscling into Iraqi politics to prevent anti-American clerics from coming to power. This is particularly necessary if, as expected, the United States begins to militate against Iran.

That is not the vision of Iraqi liberation we were offered, nor would it sit well with an increasingly insolent Arab world. It would strengthen the hand of the mullahs in Iran, where liberal reform is rickety, and it would unsettle others in the region in unpredictable ways. But Bush, who certainly resembles his idol Ronald Reagan in his string of good luck, might yet enforce the strategy of conquer-and-divide, and avoid the catastrophe that lurks in the ruins of war.

John Tirman, program director at the Social Science Research Council, is author of "Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade."

Elections change history in unexpected ways. This is the twentieth anniversary of one such election, when Ronald Reagan was voted into the White House. No one foresaw the changes that election day wrought on his key issue -- namely, the bitter and dangerous rivalry with the Soviet Union. The unexpected outcome was not only the rivalry's sudden and spectacular demise, but the way it unraveled.

The November 4, 1980 election gave the presidency to Reagan over incumbent President Jimmy Carter, but it also heralded the beginning of a remarkable social movement. On that same day, in 59 of 62 local referenda throughout western and central Massachusetts, a resolution was passed that demanded a halt to the superpowers' nuclear arms competition. Organized by the Traprock Peace Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, the referenda's overwhelming support in a period of heightened fear of and hostility toward Moscow -- the sentiments that propelled Reagan's candidacy -- lead a number of political activists, intellectuals, and philanthropists to seize the opportunity to organize on a grander scale.

The result was the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and allied organizations that swiftly altered the landscape of the debate over nuclear weapons and U.S.-Soviet relations. Within months, hundreds of non-profit groups had sprung up to challenge longstanding beliefs about the necessity of nuclear deterrence and military prowess. And within two years, Reagan himself was forced to acknowledge that nuclear weapons were not usable, and soon began to negotiate the sort of arms-reduction agreements he had run against in 1980. Congress became newly emboldened to restrain Reagan's darker impulses, even imposing unilateral arms control on space weapons and nuclear tests.

The ideas for disarmament and cooperation fostered by the anti-nuclear movement seeped into the Kremlin and were embraced soon after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985. Notions of "cooperative security" and "non-offensive defense," developed in the West and brought to Gorbachev by American and European intellectuals, gradually infused official Soviet thinking.

When Reagan's presidency was rocked by the Iran-contra scandal in late 1986, he immediately took up Gorbachev's peace overtures and, just a few months later, both signed the first treaty to reduce nuclear weapons and sketched out the reductions still being realized today.

One can argue many influences on this extraordinary history, but the peace movement -- possibly the largest citizens' crusade in American history -- was fundamental in articulating the public demand that pressured and encouraged leaders to take risks to end the nuclear danger. The fact that this peace movement was born, in effect, on the same day that Reagan's presidency was also given birth is particularly poignant.

What surprises lurk in the politics of this election? The obvious parallel to 1980 is the anti-globalization forces that rocked the world's trade ministers in Seattle less than a year ago. Those groups, from the anarchic to the scholarly, were nurtured in a similar way -- a few activists and critical intellectuals, backed by a handful of progressive donors, gradually building a movement and a case against the ill effects of a globalized economy.

This, indeed, is the pattern for most successful attempts at profound political reform: a cohort of innovative thinkers allied with grassroots activists change the social values underlying the political culture, and some attentive political leaders respond creatively. This is happening, and will happen, again and again, here and abroad. A safe bet is that the anti-globalization movement -- which insists on higher wages, better working conditions, and environmentally safe practices in manufacturing -- will be the first to confront the new president, with possibly profound consequences.

But it may be that there are other social forces swirling beneath the surface that will rise quickly to alter the course of history. Elections are not just about presidents, after all, but about democratic dreams of a better life.

John Tirman is author of Making the Money Sing: Private Wealth and Public Power in the Search for Peace, published this autumn by Rowman & Littlefield. He is a program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York.