The Solution Was So Simple It Plumb Evaded Us
 

Of all the procedures in place that broke down on 9-11 and failed to protect us, the results of the 9/11 Commission gave us the one definitive recommendation to keep us safe in the future...create another bureaucracy. It has been determined by that prestigious panel that there needs to be coordination of the information coming out of our 15 intelligence agencies. Fifteen agencies? Fifteen? Are we going for one on one coverage? And we needed a blue ribbon panel to determine that somebody needed to coordinate and decide what to do with all this information after it was collected? The fact that nobody thought of this before scares me more than terrorists. We have a president, a vice president, a secretary of defense, a national security advisor, a national security secretary and a host of various and sundry titles but nobody had the job of looking at what we created fifteen agencies to do. That's probably why we have 15 of them. Since nobody was looking at what information was found, no one knew we had it, so we created another agency to look for it.

While it should be obvious that there needs to be a coordination of collected information, do we really need another whole department with another 120 employees? We have a Secretary of Defense. Wouldn't defending us against terrorists come under that department and its staff? Since the issue is national security shouldn't it come under one of the National Security Agency headings? What about the Department of Homeland Security? Even though the name is far too reminiscent of 1930s Germany, are none of those 136,000 employees looking at the information from our 15 intelligence agencies? Somebody is giving Tom Ridge information that raises and lowers our color codes.

It would seem that the money that will be appropriated to establish a new bureaucracy needs to be spent on streamlining and upgrading the Department of Immigration and Naturalization. Months after 9-11 Immigration finally got around to sending a notice that one of the terrorists had a visa violation. People come here on student visas and never enroll. We lose track of them. What is needed is a way to know where these people are and what they are doing while they are here. Since anyone, regardless of age or educational background can apply for and receive a student visa, a better system of monitoring should be established, perhaps directly at the educational institutions through their International Students' Offices.

It isn't just one change or one area that needs to be improved. The strictest of immigration laws won't help unless our borders and ports are made secure. Rather than limiting more Americans' freedoms, we need to be more selective about the guests coming into our country. However, while intelligence plays a vital role, to make us truly safe from retaliatory terror attacks, we must change our policies that are inflammatory and which promote a desire for revenge. We aren't hated for what we are. We are hated for what we do.

8-13-04