Civic Security

Why FDR’s bottom-up brand of civic defense should inspire progressive plans for homeland security today.

In a June 2002 nationally televised address, President George W. Bush announced his plan to establish a Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It wasn’t exactly a new idea–Democrats had proposed creating a Cabinet-level agency several months earlier. Nevertheless, Senator Edward Kennedy praised Bush’s announcement as a “positive step,” while House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi said that such a department will “hopefully take some of the fear out of [people’s] lives.” This spirit of optimism soon disappeared, though, as both sides descended into name-calling during the 2002 midterm campaign. In debating the prospects for the new department, Democrats described Republicans as fear-mongers; Republicans accused Democrats of being soft on terrorism.

The actual workings of DHS have further sapped observers’ enthusiasm. Since its inception, the department has been an uneven, questionable enterprise. Hurricane Katrina was its most famous failure: DHS was clearly unprepared to handle a natural disaster. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown, whose agency had been moved to the DHS stable, became a poster boy for departmental cronyism, and Bush’s bureaucratic approach proved incapable of providing even the most basic needs, such as drinking water, and performing core functions, such as search-and-rescue operations. It also failed to coordinate its lackluster operations with state and local officials.

Katrina was only the most obvious example of DHS failure. Domestic security officials have mismanaged the bureaucracy, and misplaced priorities have tarnished DHS’s mission. In 2003 DHS Secretary Tom Ridge quixotically urged Americans to buy duct tape so they could seal their windows in case of a chemical attack, and the Administration repeatedly and inexplicably raised the terrorism-alert threat level in 2004 in what seemed a crude attempt to scare voters. The Washington Post summed up DHS’s problems in late 2005 when it reported that the department suffered from “haphazard design, bureaucratic warfare, and unfulfilled promises.” The problem, however, is not just about individual managers or appointees. Rather, it goes to the heart of Bush’s domestic-security paradigm: Politically charged and Washington-centered, the White House has failed to rally Americans behind the idea that the homeland is something we should all be involved in defending, not just the job of a cluster of inefficient agencies in the capital.

Democratic leaders responded to DHS’s record by attacking its failures under Bush and proposing some important reforms, including basing homeland security appropriations on a city’s terrorism risk and screening more checked airline baggage, sea freight, and air cargo. But these ideas sit at the margins of the debate over what a proper domestic-security framework should look like, and an alternative to Bush’s top-down approach has yet to emerge. When the stakes are this high and the need for reform this great, such timidity is inexcusable. Bush bears primary responsibility, but not all of it, and in any case, he will be out of office soon enough. A new vision for homeland security is desperately needed. The failure of progressives to offer such a competing vision has produced a shortsighted homeland security debate that ignores fundamental questions: How should domestic defense should be organized? How should threats be defined? And what is the role of civilians in homeland defense?

Fortunately, progressives do not need to look far to find an approach that is workable, responsible, and grounded in America’s basic values. Although the Bush Administration maintains that its homeland security effort is an unprecedented undertaking, it isn’t. In fact, the American experience on the homefront during World War II–led by a Democratic president and administered by progressives around the country–provides today’s leaders with a “usable past” from which they can begin to update their ideas and rethink homeland security’s direction.

In May 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing a federal agency to do the twin jobs of civilian protection and civilian mobilization. The little-remembered Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) was among the more important, if embattled, agencies of the World War II era. As the first predecessor to DHS, it serves as both a precedent and a parallel to the debates about homeland defense that have dominated the discourse ever since September 11.

Progressives’ experience in defending the homeland during World War II teaches that citizen action is essential to any domestic security policy. This legacy should challenge progressives to broaden the definition of homeland security to increase civic participation at the local level, seek opportunities for people to improve their communities while also defending America, and link democratic ideals to the War on Terror in meaningful ways for Americans. By doing so, they will, for the first time, offer a genuine choice on how to address the homeland security issue in this post–9/11 age.

The Progressive Precedent

Of course, the threat posed by small bands of stateless terrorists differs from the one posed by German U-Boats and Japanese Zeros. But the debates about civil defense during World War II–and the plans and policies adopted to meet those threats–have profound echoes in our own times. Then, as now, fear of an attack on America was palpable.

In 1940, CBS News radio correspondent Edward R. Murrow described first-hand the devastation inflicted by the Nazis’ “blitz” of London, and millions of Americans listened raptly. Approximately 43,000 British civilians died and 140,000 more were injured in the attacks. Ambassador William C. Bullitt, among others, urged Americans to feel the danger that the Axis Powers posed to America’s shores, even though the United States wasn’t yet a combatant.

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