Matthew Dallek: Why FDR's bottom-up brand of civic defense should inspire progressive plans for homeland security today
[Historian Matthew Dallek is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation.]
... A new vision for homeland security is desperately needed [given the failures of Bush's Homeland Security Department even to address the needs of the victims of Katrina]. 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.
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....
Read entire article at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
... A new vision for homeland security is desperately needed [given the failures of Bush's Homeland Security Department even to address the needs of the victims of Katrina]. 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.
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....