In Defense of a Bush Administration Initiative*

*Made you look, didn't I...?

Actually, I wanted to draw your attention to an article by security expert and talented essayist Bruce Schneier. His personal site has a number of good articles on various aspects of security- online and in the real world. This pre-election piece summarizes the ways in which the fight against terror is being mishandled by the current administration, and centers on the infamous and frequently ridiculed color-coded terror alert system.

HOWEVER, being true to the title of this posting, I just want to mention one reasonable argument in favor of this system, which I haven't seen discussed anywhere else. And while I agree with Schneier's assessment of the overall approach, I have always though it important to be bipartisan and objective when implementing systems that have such vital tasks (i.e. keeping you and me alive).

The advantage of having a simple, five level, terror threat assessment is that it funnels all of the intelligence that is continually monitoring world conditions. Fighting terror is not done by huge, government funded assualts. No ICBM or space-based laser can stop a guy with a box cutter in the right place and at the right time. No armor division can rush in to save lives after an attack. To do this, your troops are all of your local first responders- police, firefighters, EMS, etc... These agencies, in every little community around the country, are constantly dealing with stuff like shift staffing, equipment availability, overtime, maintenance and vacation requests.

A terror threat has implications for all of these little details. So by having a simple one word distillation of the threat assessment from the government, all of these thousands of little agencies around the country can make appropriate adjustments on a daily basis, limiting the need for elaborate individual communication between each beaurocracy and the hierarchy above it.

Is the intelligence accurate? Well, that's another problem. But at least this approach does streamline one important link in the country's terror-response system. The problems arise- as Mr. Schneier outlines in his article- when this useful operational device becomes a public news event and a political football.

So a big shout out from me to GWB for getting something right...! As the saying goes, "Even a blind pig sometimes finds an acorn".