Somehow, though, a few of the themes I struggled with just a couple of weeks ago came into sharper focus for me this week in the form of two articles I read. The first described the effects of growing income inequality on individual mortality. Put simply, those who earn the least can not only expect to live shorter lives, but they can also expect their longevity to diminish as the length or the depth of the gap widens between their earnings and those at the top. The article cites other studies’ speculation as to the causes of income inequality-related mortality while noting that the academic research cited has reached no firm conclusion about specific causes, especially over the short-term. At the same time, the study provides compelling evidence of the cumulative effect of income inequality on health.

The second article suggested that crime really does pay. Or rather that unethical behavior or at the very least less-than-ethical behavior has its rewards. The Harvard Business Review item noted a recent study that displayed significant gaps between the earnings of those men who self-reported improvements in ethical awareness and subsequent ethical conduct as a result of exposure to ethical principles and practices in their post-graduate management curricula. (Sorry, no word on how the women did. Let’s just hope it was considerably better than the boys.) Sadly, but probably not too surprisingly, those who earned the most reported little awareness of or influence from exposure to ethics while earning their MBAs.

These two items got me reflecting anew on a third item that aired on May 1. NPR’s Planet Money Team produced a truly exceptional segment entitled Psychology of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things. This piece examined the story of Toby Groves, a convicted mortgage fraudster who convinced colleagues to conspire with him to create a ghost mortgage, a very real loan for an utterly fictitious property, to cover mismanagement of his business.

In the simplest terms, Toby and his colleagues justified their actions by framing the problem in two very simple but compelling ways. First, instead of seeing their actions as unethical, which they openly acknowledged they were, they reframed the decision as one of business necessity. They supported this framing in a second but equally compelling way by seeing their actions as a personal favor for a trusted friend and valued colleague. In other words, they saw Toby as someone they liked and enjoyed working with who now needed a small favor from them as opposed to the illegal and craven actions of a desperate man at his wits’ end. In short, their decisions to be helpful were aided by the notion that Toby Groves was a business associate, his business was at risk due to financial decisions they all make, and the actions he requested of them (which he openly acknowledged could get them all in heaps of trouble) required little effort on their part and were actions in which they were routinely engaged as part of their normal and legitimate business practices. Clearly, the road to hell — and prison — is paved with good intentions.

If the NPR story had any shortcomings, it was in the lack of resolution I felt from the reforms they suggested might arise to combat the problem of inappropriate cognitive framing of ethical dilemmas in the business environment. How, I wondered, might it help the situation to remind people on the forms the are signing that lying or misrepresentation are unethical or illegal? Don’t they know this already? And who reads the fine print anyway? Sure, it might help to change auditors frequently to keep them from becoming too cosy with those they oversee. But don’t we want auditors to be both rational and fair? Does this not suggest a need for some sort of empathy? How much then is too much?

Clearly, the dilemmas we face are becoming more complex just as they problems that give rise to them become more complicated and even convoluted. The credit crunch that led to the lingering economic stagnation we still endure, the ideological and political excesses of violent extremists here and abroad, and the inability to reconcile political differences for the common good not only reflect certain states of mind but also provoke powerful emotions in us that arise largely from our own cognitive biases. The challenge then is not to oversimplify any of these issues but to see them for what they are: Situations that require us to apply many different frames to achieve not only the proper resolution but sufficient perspective to interpret correctly what sits before our eyes.

We can look upon the health effects of income inequality as the sad but unintended consequences of an otherwise salutary economic system or an injustice that demands redress. We can reward unethical conduct in the workplace and accept unequal rewards for those who look after themselves before others or we can hold one another to account for what each of us thinks, says and does. If it’s true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then it’s also worth noting that there’s more than one way to skin a cat and we should try them all rather than looking for the easy way out.

I don’t want the book to end.  It’s really good.

I’ve read Tom Ridge’s and Michael Chertoff’s after-office books.   Permanent Emergency is in its own class, at least when it comes to back-in-the-day homeland security memoirs.  Ridge’s book engages the reader.  Chertoff’s book challenges (ok, it’s a hard read).

Hawley and Means’ work is a page turner.  I will not be surprised if Permanent Emergency is made into a movie.  A made-for-TV movie. But still, a movie. (By then, maybe the book can lose the melodramatic subtitle, “Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security.”)

—————————————————-

Here are some of the questions the book asks and answers:

How did TSA get into the behavioral detection business?  Why do passengers really have to take their shoes off during screening? (It’s not because of the shoe bomber.)

What’s life like for a screener? Why do they check wheelchairs and people who’s hips have been replaced?  Why do they follow rules instead of use their discretion?  What was the only professional decoration Hawley had on his “love me” wall?

What command center did the TV show 24 model?  What law enforcement agency receives “the best and most specialized firearms training?” How long does it take to fire a senior executive who’s not doing his job?

How credible was the UK liquid bomb threat? How long did TSA have to implement the liquids ban? How did they get it done? Why is the 3 ounce rule actually 3.4 ounces? (Ask someone who knows the metric system.) And why plastic bags? What happened to the man in Milwakee who wrote “Kip Haweley is an idiot” on his plastic bag?

How did the TSA blog get started?  And how did Blogger Bob get his job?  Why did TSA use the Blogger platform (available free from Google) instead of spending millions to develop a proprietary blogging platform? Why did the blog change its name from the empirically accurate “Evolution of Security” to the bureaucratically bland “TSA Blog.” (The book doesn’t answer the last two questions, but inquiring minds remain interested.)

Where did Hawley get his ideas from about aviation security as a complex adaptive system?  Why was he told not to talk about complexity theory in public? (Seriously.)

—————————————————-

Every man is the hero of a biography he had a hand in writing. This book is no exception.  At times Permanent Emergency reads like a 21st century version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Like Mr. Smith, Hawley (and the talented team of people he collected and credits) got things done. Not everything he wanted to do. But progress.

Also like Mr. Smith, I’m sure there were people in Washington who wanted Hawley gone before he did leave.  I spoke with a few of them over the years.  The consensus from those few was “nice guy, but in over his head.”

OK, but who’s not in over their head in this homeland security business? That does not mean you can’t learn how to get things accomplished.

Permanent Emergency would be a valuable addition to almost any homeland security academic program in the country. For one thing, it’s written so well students will actually read it. I’m not kidding when I say it’s a page turner.

For another, it shows how one person (ok, one person with great contacts and experience) can make a difference. It shows the importance of being able to spot talent and clear the path for that talent to disrupt — in creative and productive ways – staid organizations. It shows the role politics, bureaucracy, leadership, science, research, trial and error, communication, good and bad luck, public relations, physical energy, commitment, intelligence, risk management, sacrifice and persistence play in getting things done in homeland security.

It also reminds the reader how much uncertainty and stumbling and making things up characterized homeland security’s first years.

—————————————————-

I met Kip Hawley twice. I found him creatively thoughtful, sincere, and caring. He also appears to listen to the people talking to him. Those traits come through in the book.

Before I read Permanent Emergency I was not a fan of how TSA does its mission. For a lot of reasons, I think on balance the costs — including the privacy we surrender to fly — are greater than the benefits we receive from submitting to the government.  I recognize there are other views — including Kip Hawley’s.

After reading Hawley and Means’ book, I’m still not a TSA fan.  But the authors make me doubt some of the reasons why I hold the postion I do.

Whether you largely agree with TSA’s role in homeland security or not, if you read this book your views about the agency and the people who serve in it will change.  Maybe permanently.

He gives voice to those concerned about the threat:

Graham Allison predicted in Nuclear Terrorism (2004) that, “In my considered judgment, on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not.”

And those slightly more dismissive:

John Mueller’s answer, in Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (2010) is that nuclear dangers are far less than we presume:

Fears and anxieties about them, while understandable, have been excessive, and they have severely, detrimentally, and even absurdly distorted spending priorities while inspiring policies that have often been overwrought, ill conceived, counterproductive, and sometimes massively destructive. And they continue to do so.

It is not a long post, so I instead of continuing to post quotes in absence of my own analysis, I’ll just end with his conclusion:

Are we winning or losing the battle against proliferation? There are indicators that point in both directions. How you answer this question probably reflects your optimistic or pessimistic nature.

Again, if you’re interested in the topic (and proliferation in general, which he addresses in an earlier related post) it is worth your time:

http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3439/are-we-winning-or-losing-continued

–+–

As was the case with NSC-68, the National Preparedness series is being authored by a collective.  This is the way of government.  Recall that Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration was edited first by a committee and then by the entire Continental Congress.  It is unusual for clarity of thought to survive such a process.

I know — and respect — several individuals who are contributing to the National Preparedness series.  I don’t know their individual contributions and have not asked for their private critiques, concerns, or enthusiasms.  I empathize with their struggle to deal with the tensions involved in generating any document of this sort — and even more, the challenges to practically advancing policy.

I am using the National Preparedness series to press my arguments and make my own contributions to national resilience. The documents are helpful to this work.  I appreciate the outcomes, even as I unfavorably compare the outcomes to the Declaration of Independence and NSC-68.

At least I did not choose Shakespeare and Lincoln as your benchmarks.

The music of the Declaration reflects the remnant of Thomas Jefferson’s voice that survived the editorial process.  The clarity-of-argument in NSC-68 is a double-echo of the dialectic between Kennan and Nitze.   In some ways, the document is Nitze’s edit of Kennan’s Long Telegram.  Two superb minds engaging the same problem, disagreeing, agreeing, refining and reframing.  In the end, Nitze’s voice was strongest, but he would not have sung this song without Kennan’s prelude.

If there is a principal author of the National Preparedness series I do not hear his or her voice.

This is typical of most government reports, even those, as from GAO or CRS, who identify specific authors.  There are a host of motivations for this default anonymity.  Potentially the most powerful — and least credible — is the desire to achieve a tone of omniscient authority.

By contrast, in both the Declaration and NSC-68 any discerning reader is fully aware an argument is being offered, a case is being made, counter-arguments are anticipated, a dialogue is assumed… even as the author(s) scrambles for the moral high ground and persuasive preemption.  With all his personal confidence, network of influence, and even with the power of the President’s pen expected, Nitze does not proclaim.  He describes.  He questions.  He argues.

Why is that sort  of voice so rare?

This is a substantive, not merely stylistic difference.  The vain attempt for omniscient authority asserts right-and-wrong and a claim to compliance.  Offering an argument honors  and invites the independent judgment of your readers.

From section VI, A of NSC-68:

The full power which resides within the American people will be evoked only through the traditional democratic process: This process requires, firstly, that sufficient information regarding the basic political, economic, and military elements of the present situation be made publicly available so that an intelligent popular opinion may be formed. Having achieved a comprehension of the issues now confronting this Republic, it will then be possible for the American people and the American Government to arrive at a consensus. Out of this common view will develop a determination of the national will and a solid resolute expression of that will.

Again, this was a classified document.  No one was trying to pander to a political audience.  The document itself circulated among mostly elite circles at a time when both classified documents and elite circles were more tightly contained than today.  What would be the reaction of “intelligent public opinion” if the National Preparedness series included the quoted paragraph?

What might it mean if Nitze actually believed and behaved as if the stated assumption were true? Do we?

–+–

Homeland security suffers from taxonomy-obsession.

What is prevention?  How is it differentiated from protection?  Doesn’t mitigation sometimes prevent?  Sometimes protect?  Isn’t mitigation often a “response” to a prior event?  When does response become recovery?  Are some events non-recoverable?  I have asked each of these questions in earnest more than once. (“Hi, my name is Phil, and I’m obsessive-compulsive regarding the seams between the homeland security mission areas.”)

There has been a persisting tendency to perceive that if we could just accurately frame the homeland security domain and its principal parts, we could then assign roles and responsibilities with clarity, fund appropriately, and craft the best of all possible worlds.

Systems engineering was especially hot at the turn of the century, perhaps this discipline is more a part of the homeland security field’s DNA than we have fully acknowledged.  Are we hard-wired by the time-and-place of homeland security’s genesis to constantly cycle through requirements analyses? (There’s a vision of hell if I’ve ever heard one.)

Whatever its source, there is a continuing fascination with finding the right taxonomy.  Below, again, is the National Preparedness framework of five mission areas and thirty-one core capabilities.  Farther below is Carl Linnaeus‘ taxonomy for the animal kingdom: six classes consisting of various orders, then families and so on (by clicking on the image you can see a larger version).  The parallels are, I think, remarkable.

If you are over 45 you probably have a vague memory of Linnaean taxonomy from 7th grade science.  If you’re under 45 and/or a biologist you know this system has been mostly superseded by other descriptive systems.  Linnaeus sought to distinguish by function. Many of the newer systems highlight origins and relationships.

Linnaeus advanced our understanding.  The five mission areas and 31 core capabilities also advance our understanding.  But the greatest value will almost certainly emerge from recognizing and making sense of the relationships across the mission areas and core capabilities.  There are, and will need to be, functional divisions within the homeland security “kingdom.”  But these divisions are means, not ends.

The November 2011 version of the National Preparedness System closes with the following two paragraphs:

While the National Preparedness System builds on a number of proven processes, it will evolve to capitalize on new opportunities and meet emerging challenges. Many of the programs and processes that support the components of the National Preparedness System exist and are currently in use; others will need to be updated or developed. As the remaining PPD-8 deliverables are developed, further details will be provided on how the National Preparedness System will be implemented across the five mission areas in order to achieve the National Preparedness Goal.

This document describes a collaborative environment and living system whose components will be routinely evaluated and updated to ensure their continued effectiveness. This environment will be supported through collaboration and cooperation with international partners, including working closely with our neighbors Canada and Mexico, with whom we share common borders. In the end,the National Preparedness System’s strength relies on ensuring the whole community has the opportunity to contribute to its implementation to achieve the goal of a secure and resilient Nation.

The National Preparedness System is emerging.  As it does, can it find a unique voice, well-matched to its extraordinary mission, capable of effectively advancing the purposes articulated in PPD-8?  As it emerges, can the National Preparedness System avoid the reductionist specialization that is endemic to modern organizations? With the second annual National Preparedness Report will we read and believe that relationships are being fostered across mission areas and core capabilities, among jurisdictions, and between private, public and civic sectors?

Linnaeus warned, “Nature does not proceed by leaps.”   Neither does the best policy-making.  But each can grow, change, and evolve.

The forebears for this race of documents might be extended into the mist of history and myth: a veritable Book of Numbers or Metamorphoses of policy-making.

But surely the one common ancestor looming over this titillating thicket of conceptual coupling would be NSC-68.    If ever there was an Ur text, this is one.  In fifty-eight pages a national policy was articulated with such clarity and strength that it seemed to call-forth — creating not just framing — a half-century of national purpose.   President Truman signed the document on September 30, 1950.  Some suggest NSC-68 achieved its apotheosis on November 9, 1989.

The problem of preparedness is no less acute or consequential than the problems facing Truman, Acheson, Nitze, Kennan, et al.  Here’s how PPD-8 situates our current challenge:

This directive is aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of the United States through systematic preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of the Nation, including acts of terrorism, cyber attacks, pandemics, and catastrophic natural disasters. Our national preparedness is the shared responsibility of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and individual citizens. Everyone can contribute to safeguarding the Nation from harm. As such, while this directive is intended to galvanize action by the Federal Government, it is also aimed at facilitating an integrated, all-of-Nation, capabilities-based approach to preparedness.

This is a big idea.  Read it again, not as a dollop of  political/bureaucratic prose but as if it was an earnest expression of national intent.

NSC-68 was also capabilities-oriented.  A long quote:

In examining our capabilities it is relevant to ask at the outset–capabilities for what? The answer cannot be stated solely in the negative terms of resisting the Kremlin design. It includes also our capabilities to attain the fundamental purpose of the United States, and to foster a world environment in which our free society can survive and flourish.

Potentially we have these capabilities. We know we have them in the economic and military fields. Potentially we also have them in the political and psychological fields. The vast majority of Americans are confident that the system of values which animates our society–the principles of freedom, tolerance, the importance of the individual, and the supremacy of reason over will–are valid and more vital than the ideology which is the fuel of Soviet dynamism. Translated into terms relevant to the lives of other peoples–our system of values can become perhaps a powerful appeal to millions who now seek or find in authoritarianism a refuge from anxieties, bafflement, and insecurity…

These capabilities within us constitute a great potential force in our international relations. The potential within us of bearing witness to the values by which we live holds promise for a dynamic manifestation to the rest of the world of the vitality of our system. The essential tolerance of our world outlook, our generous and constructive impulses, and the absence of covetousness in our international relations are assets of potentially enormous influence.

These then are our potential capabilities. Between them and our capabilities currently being utilized is a wide gap of unactualized power.

It is worth recalling that NSC-68 was a classified document.  The public did not see it until a quarter-century after the President’s signature.   In our Ur text policy-makers are self-consciously communicating, arguing, analyzing, trying to persuade their fellow policy-makers.

The National Preparedness Goal lists thirty-one core capabilities.  The National Preparedness Report gives attention to each.  ”Freedom, tolerance, the importance of the individual, and the supremacy of reason over will” are not  among the thirty-one.

Each of the core capabilities are organized by five mission priorities.  Within the government, these mission-with-capability-clusters increasingly reflect lines of authority and responsibility.  What we have in the NPG, NPS, and NPR is an effort to describe reality and an emerging structure for engaging that reality.

It tends to be a very instrumental view of reality, almost mechanistic.   It is, at least in my judgment, consistent with observations of reality. It is also complicated.  The National Preparedness System has begun to remind me of Ptolemy’s eccentric, epicycle,  and equant.  It works, but is less than elegant.

This is not meant as a fundamental critique of the National Preparedness collection and is certainly not a criticism of these documents’ authors.

It is an expression of concern regarding contemporary rhetoric, by which I mean the art of decision making.

If the National Preparedness authors had used a rhetoric similar to NSC-68, my obscure voice at this little blog would have congratulated them.  From nearly every other corner they would have been savaged, being accused of superficiality, hypocrisy, and — probably — jaw-dropping hubris.  Yet this older rhetoric and its now seemingly quaint gathering of evidence and argument is still honored for having set-the-stage for winning the Cold War.

Beyond matters of style, I perceive an important substantive difference between the intellectual and operational assumptions set out in NSC-68 and those unfolding from the National Preparedness collection.  What are those differences?  What may be their practical implications?

Take some time to read NSC-68 and come back tomorrow.

It should stay that way.

Not because men are superior to women, or because male Marines want to discriminate against female Marines. Marines are Marines. But men are different from women. And that difference, when exposed in combat will be deadly, not only for the fighting female Marine, but for her male and female counterparts.

The Infantry Officer Course (IOC) teaches Marine Officers to be better leaders and killers than their enemies. It’s where we build Marine Infantry skills to win our wars and lead our Marines. War is killing. Let that sink in. It is legal murder, encouraged, ordered and demanded. In order to be effective at it, proficiency must not only be gained, but practiced and perfected.

The Basic School is where all Marine Second Lieutenants go to become basically trained officers prior to their military occupational assignment. During one of their training exercises years ago, the evaluators “killed” a 6’1”, 195 lb. male Marine Officer. He was within prescribed height and weight standards, and in an excellent state of fitness. He was also 30 years old. The evaluator then assigned the only available Marine, a female officer to carry the “dead” officer from the training battle field. The female officer was within the “normal” or “average” range for size; she was 5’4” and 125-130 lb. She was in superior physical condition, was 23 years old, and had a perfect physical fitness score on her most recent test. Both were wearing typical combat loads of 65-80 lb. of gear.

What happened? The female could not lift the male Marine. She could barely move him. She removed her gear to improve her strength-to- weight ratio. She still was unable to manage the weight.

Then what happened?

In order to move the problem along, the evaluator “unkilled” the male and “killed” the female and reversed their roles. The male put back on all his combat gear. So did the female officer, both adding the additional weight. Even though the male was not in the same physical condition as his female peer, he bent over and scooped her up, gear and all, and carried her several hundred yards.

Years before the phrase entered the language, the evaluator engaged in what today is called “gender norming.”

Military gender norming is the practice of judging female military service members, applicants or recruits by less stringent standards than their male counterparts. Physical standards are lowered, modified, or just plain overlooked. Norming is all about fairness and equity. Norming metrics allow for “equal competition”.

But there’s nothing equal, normal or fair about war. Anyone who’s ever fought in one can tell you that.

Women Marines have every bit of integrity and are every bit as good and possibly better than their male counterparts in marksmanship, intellect, problem solving, managing stress, and leadership. But it’s for the same reason women don’t play in the NFL, NBA, NHL, or run marathons as fast as men, or bench-press 1,000+ pounds, nor will they ever be truly equal in combat.

The march of women’s rights simply cannot overpower the Laws of Physics. The average man is 5” taller and 50 lb. heavier than the average woman. Men have a lower body fat percentage than women, more lean body mass, and are anatomically different in terms of physical make up, angles of leverage, and skeletally. The physics favor the male species, not the female. Men create more force.

This is Newton’s second law of motion. Force is equal to mass times acceleration. Bigger things that go faster create more force. They always have and always will. There is no engineering feat or physics norming phenomena that can mitigate the capability of a male to lift more, jump higher, run faster, hit harder, and execute violence better than a woman. There is no formula to replicate the combination of force and aggression.

Combat is the most physically demanding, most mentally fatiguing, and most forceful violent interaction humans can perpetuate against one another. It is highly kinetic in nature; blunt force trauma if you will. And it’s final.

It follows, then, as sure as the laws of physics, that if women are introduced to Marine Combat Infantry Units the readiness and capability of those units will be denigrated. If women are not successful in completing the training, the uproar against the “sexist men’s club” and purposeful exclusion will rain down from the sky. In either case trust will be compromised, and trust is a vital element in successful combat.

Those who advocate that women and men are the same and can perpetuate physical brutality equally are far more abusive and anti-women than any group who advocates against putting females into this “opportunity”. There is nothing “Pro Woman” about making women second-class killers.

From a national security perspective, this latest experiment by the Marine Corps, conducted largely because of politics, will only damage and weaken our nation and our ‘Corps.

We have met the enemy, and it is us.

Dan O’Connor is a retired Marine officer with 22 years service.  These are his opinions.

By Mark Clayton writing in the Christian Science Montior.

A major cyber attack is currently underway aimed squarely at computer networks belonging to US natural gas pipeline companies, according to alerts issued to the industry by the US Department of Homeland Security.

At least three confidential “amber” alerts – the second most sensitive next to “red” – were issued by DHS beginning March 29, all warning of a “gas pipeline sector cyber intrusion campaign” against multiple pipeline companies. But the wave of cyber attacks, which apparently began four months ago – and may also affect Canadian natural gas pipeline companies – is continuing.

That fact was reaffirmed late Friday in a public, albeit less detailed, “incident response” report from the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), an arm of DHS based in Idaho Falls. It reiterated warnings in the earlier confidential alerts made directly to pipeline companies and some power companies.

MORE AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

During the House of Representatives so-called Cyber Week there was disagreement regarding the nature of the cyber threat.  Following is a recent Richard Clark quote differentiating an acute threat from a chronic threat:

People keep asking, well, do we have to have a cyber Pearl Harbor in order for people to do the right thing? Implicit in that question is sort of a hope that that will happen and then maybe we’ll fix everything. I don’t know that there ever will be a cyber Pearl Harbor. What I do know is that we’re suffering the death of a thousand cuts in the little Pearl Harbors that are happening every day, where cyberespionage and cybercrime are having a huge cumulative and negative effect. The theft of research and development information, the theft of intellectual property, the theft even of transactional data is giving huge economic advantage to our competitive opponents in other countries. If we all sit around waiting for the apocalypse to do something appropriate on cybersecurity, it may never happen and we may never solve the problem.

In the New York Time’s Friday piece on the National Preparedness Report, the reporter emphasized cyber vulnerabilities (not where my first read took me):

… it was the report’s findings about cybersecurity that appeared to be the most troubling, and they continued a drumbeat from the Obama administration about the need for Congress to pass legislation giving the Department of Homeland Security the authority to regulate computer security for the country’s infrastructure.

The report said that cybersecurity “was the single core capability where states had made the least amount of overall progress” and that only 42 percent of state and local officials believed that theirs was adequate.

I hope HLSWatch readers will take the time to read the NPR.  I would welcome your comments, concerns, or more here.   How should we read it?  What are the major take-aways?  What are the major questions raised?  What should we do with it? What can we do with it?  If there is a delta between should and can, what does that tell us?

At this blog — especially with the encouragement of Christopher Bellavita (the Greek and Latin amalgam meaning Christ-bearer/Beautiful Life) — we periodically wonder and argue about the making of homeland security.

The last few days I have been in New England on various homeland security assignments.  After my last Saturday morning appointment I discovered the Brattle Bookshop at 9 West Street in Boston.  From their open air shelves (and shelves and shelves) of $1, $3, and $5 books, I purchased The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden (Random House, 1945).

This edition includes September 1, 1939, that Auden later exiled from his authorized oeuvre, but was so often quoted in the days following September 11, 2001.  Especially:

The last stanza is my favorite, but it has been less associated with homeland security.  See comments for this bit.

So down a dim alley I found an old restaurant where I shared a late lunch with Auden.  Adam Gopnik later joined us, helpfully explaining what the poet means by “Double Man.”

At the time, and even at Auden’s death, the war poems were not critically admired.  Many claimed America had confused, even cheapened the Englishman.

But in our own war-time the words have found renewed resonance.  From Spring 1940:

Last weekend I returned to my childhood home.  There most do not share our concerns.  The debt is a bigger deal than any pending disaster (rather is the pending disaster). For them TSA is a bigger threat than terrorism.  Should I disagree? Though I was happy to have an old friend guide me through the full-body scanner at the Peoria airport.

A bare remnant seeks the philosophic city where dwells The knowledge.

What are we to make of that, O Christ-bearer?

What are we to make of that, O beautiful life?

In case of such a horrific event,  the creative assistance of those at the summit would be needed. The exercise would especially focus on the movement of supplies toward the impact zone.

First question, “Why should we share our supplies?”

My response, “Thanks for the chance to clairfy, I’m not talking about sharing your emergency inventory or anything owned by your agencies. The focus would be on facilitating a surge of private sector supply chains, private sector goods — water, food, and pharma, for example — that either originate in this area or need to move through this area.”

“I understood you the first time,” the questioner stated. “Why should we do that? If there’s a real catastrophe in (insert city name) we’ll probably need everything we can get here.”

While I offered some answers and justifications, my responses were not persuasive. Several agreed with the need to keep what they had. Others probably disagreed, but they were quiet. If there is ever a real need, I fully expect the first urban area will move mountains to help the second urban area. But for a whole host of reasons, they were not at all interested in thinking through the problems and process in advance.

Last week I was in another meeting in a different urban area, this time with private sector leaders from power, communications, water, food, pharma, banking, trucking, medical care and other key sectors. The issue was more or less the same: it is a very bad day in the big city. Your local capability is offline, even flattened. Will you work with us and participate in some exercises to think through the problem of re-supply?

The response was enthusiastic. “It’s a very interesting problem,” one offered. “Thinking through this worst-case will help us with other everyday issues,” another said. After a wide-ranging conversation one of the private sector leaders at the table stated, “This is in our self-interest. It is also in the common interest. We should have done this a long time ago.”

In each case there are back-stories, details that help explain the very different reactions. This is not an issue of good versus bad. But it is a story of two very different mind-sets.

After a few years –a lifetime? — of such contrasting experiences, I have a heuristic, a rule of thumb: Humankind is divided between those who are inclined to control and those who are inclined to create. There is a continuum with nearly everyone suspended somewhere between these two extremes (among other axes).  Where do you fall?

Those who seek to control tend to be more pessimistic. Those who seek to create tend to be more optimistic.

Pessimism may have roots in the past, but is expressed prospectively.  Optimism is mostly a matter of how the future is expected to unfold.  Each is an orientation that can skew observation and as a result be self-fulfilling.  At the extremes, both pessimism and optimism are probably forms of psychological self-protection.  Some recent research seems to suggest genetic predispositions are also in play.

The two mind-sets can be complementary, but more often clash and compete. The “control-freak” is an idiot. The “innovator” is a fool.

Any meaningful homeland security strategy must find a way to blend and benefit from both mind-sets and apply them in the here-and-now. Doing so systematically is something that requires much more attention than we currently invest.

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Late Thursday afternoon I received a copy of the National Preparedness Report, the first annual as required by PPD-8.  It deserves a closer read and more complete analysis.   But even on a first read, it is easy to perceive the struggle between control or create.  In raw form  the tension of these worldviews warps the strength of each.  When the tension is synthesized, the resilience of the whole system is enhanced.

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IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

“… I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.” (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)

See: Last Year at Abbottabad.

While you’re at the CTC site scan their other publications.  Good stuff.

Many HLSWatch readers will also be interested in a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs staff report on the radicalization of Zac Chesser.  Please access: A Case Study in Online Islamist Radicalization and Its Meaning for the Threat of Homegrown Terrorism.

In July 2010 I posted a piece entitled: Could you or I have talked Zac Chesser out of violent extremism? Arnold Bogis (not yet a fellow poster) and I had a quick exchange on the question.  In the Senate report there is  a tantalizing reference to Chesser almost being talked back from the edge.

Each set of resources offers fascinating insights into terrorist realities.

I recently discovered a cache of letters I had written (rough drafts) and received (in reply) from the early 1980s.  I came away wondering about the vagaries of memory and the often fluid nature of what purports to be real.

It’s a tad intimidating to think how these posts and comments may be read thirty years from now.  If we’re lucky these bytes may prove even more fragile than the thin airmail paper I found in a long forgotten file.   Based on all three examples, humility ages more gracefully than its opposite.