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All of us libertarians (civil and otherwise) have our panties in a bunch over the "Office of Homeland Security," and for good reason. Between President Bush's speech announcing the creation of the office (appropriately delivered from between the fasces adorning the wall of the House Chamber) and the current domestic situation, one would have to be an idiot not to see OHS as a lineal descendant of the Gestapo, the Cheka and the El Salvadoran death squads.
I've been doing a little reading, though, and I am fairly convinced that what we are seeing here is our government's version of the old "three-card monte" scam. Some of you may know this game as "follow the bitch."
It works like this: some street huckster calls you over and shows you three cards, one of them being the Queen of Hearts. He shuffles them around and asks you to tell him which one is the Queen; the first time, of course, you "win," but then money goes on the table and you might as well just hand over your wallet and walk away. You're never going to pick the right card again -- the huckster is just too good at palming the Queen. You're left following the movements of an entirely different card.
In the case of the Office of Homeland Security, the potential direct damage to our liberty is the card that has been put in front of our eyes. We follow its every movement, completely convinced that it's the Queen of Hearts. Someone says "conscription" and we look to the left. Someone mutters "have the National Guard set up random checkpoints" and we look to the right.
The bitch, meanwhile, has better things to do. She's off schtupping the CEO of Lockheed Martin while we follow the shill card and get stuck with the check for their champagne breakfast.
In January of 2001, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (usually called the Hart-Rudman Commission after the two perennial political whores who head it) released its Phase III report, "Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change" (link is to a PDF file). It is that report which calls for the creation of a National Homeland Security Administration and it does, indeed, contain numerous "massive coronary" items for civil libertarians.
Those items, however, seem to be the pretty wrapping intended to distract us from the real content of the package. At the heart of the report's recommendations lies the bitch: corporate welfare for defense contractors, unimpeded by even the minimal level of scrutiny now applied.
Among the report's recommendations:
All in all, the report makes 50 recommendations. The vast majority of them are shill cards -- thrown bones to satisfy military personnel with salary increases and an "improved" GI Bill, the education lobby with more money for teachers, and so forth -- to make the plan palatable. A few more are the ones intended to distract attention from the actual purpose by rattling the sabre against civil liberties, ensuring that our attention is focused there.
"The bitch" is the core agenda of "Imperative for Change" -- getting Congress and everyone else out from between arms manufacturers and the government's checkbook. It's not difficult to imagine Gary Hart and Warren Rudman sitting together over a beer and chuckling at those silly civil libertarians. "By the time they get through with the implied threat of bringing back the draft, and the silly recommendation that we call the National Guard out to shake down schoolkids for zip guns, they'll never notice how much money Congress gave to Acme Nuclear Warheads this year, or how much you and I are making as 'consultants' for ramming this thing through."
If you have to ask "why," the answer is usually "money." The Hart-Rudman report is too blatantly a welfare program for the military-industrial complex to ever have passed muster in normal times. It had to go on the shelf until some momentous disaster arose that would give its proponents the cover of "getting serious" rather than simply opening up the cash register for their big campaign donors and frequent post-government employers.
The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, of course, opportunity knocking. The "amazing display of bipartisanship" that has manifested itself around the prospective "Office of Homeland Security" isn't as remarkable as it seems. Not that it ever is.
The tragedy, of course, is that this huckster doesn't let you put your wallet in your pocket and go back home when you figure out that you're being conned. Even the shill cards -- maybe especially the shill cards -- carry threats of their own, and no one is allowed to stop "following the bitch."
