Risk Mitigation, Not Elimination Is The Key

Everybody is freedom's beneficiary, so everyone is freedom's protector -- Tom Ridge, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at GovSEC's Keynote address May 9, 2007

I had the opportunity to see Tom Ridge talk today. If you had asked me before, I would have said he was just another suit that did not understand this issue faced by the first responder community. I was pleasantly surprised today to see, from his words, that he not only gets it, he understands the real issues facing the community and in many cases, the nation.

In the years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there has been a down tick in the general preparedness among the population. In talking with some folks, even in California where there are risks every day, a small percentage of the population is truly ready for an emergency. And I am not talking about something catastrophic either. An emergency could be as simple as a house fire or a plumbing leak that floods your basement. It will still be a mess to clean up. In the case of a catastrophic emergency, such as hurricane, terrorist action or biohazard it can take days to get things back to something resembling functioning order, and literally years to get back to anything resembling normal, as those in New Orleans can testify.

There are not enough resources in terms of money and technology that can be distributed to every locality in the nation to get them ready. It is the sort of thing that each community has to undertake on its own because all disasters start and end locally.

The one thing he said that I disagree with what that the face of terrorism is changing. I disagree because the face of terrorism is the same as it has always been, but in the United States, the blinders have been ripped away and for the first time, the nation is truly exposed. In the past, the IRA, FMLA, FLQ, Basque Nationals and other have not shown any indication that they cared on iota for the United States, but the jihadist have their sights set on the US because that is where they perceive the biggest affect. Terrorism has been around for millions of years and it will continue to plague mankind. You cannot kill an -ism. You can, however, mitigate the risks and defuse the underlaying cause.