Spinning Homeland Security

We found an academic who actually defends the U. S. Homeland Security policy, not an easy thing to do.

At the Heritage Foundation earlier this summer, Mary Habeck, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said that overall, America’s counter-terrorism security has been “magnificent” but warned the audience that she has little doubt there will be “far deeper” troubles down the road for America.

She noted that “there has been no follow-up to 9/11 that has succeeded”—at least in scale—
and it shows “the system is working even if it had these minor failures.” Her main conclusion is that “we’re doing many things right.”

Nevertheless, she said that Americans “have been surprised” by the number of terrorist attacks since 9/11, particularly since the year 2008. She highlighted the fact that the recent terrorist attacks and attempts go directly to the issue of the “homeland security apparatus” which was set up to prevent such events. “We’ve had about a half dozen attacks that have either failed because of internal problems…or actually succeeded in killing Americans.” Habeck said she did not want this to become “an indictment” of the entire security apparatus too.

Habeck highlighted five specific attacks: Times Square, Boston Marathon, Fort Hood, Arkansas recruiting station and the Detroit shoe bomber. She argued that these incidents highlight at least two major problems “that need correction” to prevent future disasters:

• First, these terrorist attacks surprised us and somehow evaded detection from America’s homeland security apparatus.

• The second problem “is the growth and strength of reach of al-Qaeda” throughout the world in places like Libya or North Africa and an “explosion” of al-Qaeda networks.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
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