The Department of Lieberman
Peggy Noonan revives the long-simmering issue of why we’ve given our border security and disaster recovery agency the creepy and un-American name “Department of Homeland Security”:
By the way, [Barack Obama] should both reorder the Department of Homeland Security, that hopeless bureaucracy, and change its name. Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all. And at this point “Homeland Security” is associated more with pointless harassment than safety. No one knows who came up with it.
Steve Benen observes that there’s no mystery here — it was Joe Lieberman. I say we call it “The Department of Lieberman.”
Meanwhile, I saw Punisher: War Zone last night. Predictably, it’s bad. But beyond that, you can add it to the pile of the large number of films that portrays the Department of Homeland Security as some kind of incredibly badass intelligence or paramilitary outfit. I don’t understand why this keeps happening. We have all kinds of badass agencies — intelligence, special forces, SWAT teams, etc. — but DHS does border security and disaster relief, not the FBI’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism functions.
53 Responses to “The Department of Lieberman”
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December 6th, 2008 at 10:00 am
They do that BECAUSE it has such an ominous name. It sounds Nazi, so Hollywood treats it like a Nazi unit.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Because “Generic Super-Secret Way More Sophisticated Than Anything In Real Life Government Agency” seems unconvincing and has a really long acronym?
December 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am
CIA and FBI are not under DHS, but curiously the Secret Service is now part of Homeland Security. Most of the badass movie-style stuff is under DoJ.
DHS has always sounded like a name out of a bad 1990s video game.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I hear the original plan was to call it “Abteilung für den Schutz der Vaterland” and draw people offsides for Godwin’s Law violations.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:10 am
In this context, the Credo mobile phone ad running at the top of Matt’s blog is funny. Lede line is “Switching is Easy,” and it’s accompanied by a picture of Lieberman.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
That used to be “Defense Dept.” stuff, but I guess they should be renamed the Offense Dept.
Is that the same Peggy Noonan who’s gushing about how Bush has kept us safe?
December 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am
In response to “Why won’t people respect me?” Lieberman kept hearing DOH! so often that he just felt obliged to use DOHS as an acronym. The name followed.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I hear the original plan was to call it “Abteilung für den Schutz der Vaterland” and draw people offsides for Godwin’s Law violations.
Actually, they’d probably have condensed it to Heimatschutzbüro, which does have a certain ring to it. Cool-sounding long compound nouns are one of Germany’s great contributions to world culture—up there with Bach fugues and dark beer.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am
You mean, the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t do any provision of Homeland Security, but just oversees the process of annoying people at airports and taking forever to process visa applications?
Next thing you know they’ll call the War Department the “Department of Defense” or some such.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Herr Werwolf, not to be a, ahem, grammar fascist, but that would be “Abteilung für den Schutz des Vaterlands.” Vaterland is oddly enough a neuter noun. The straight-up translation of Dept. of Homeland Security the Germans use on the news is ominous enough: “Ministerium für Heimatsicherheit.”
December 6th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Good luck making changes to Homeland Security with Dumb and Dumber (Lieberman and Susan Collins) as Chair and Vice Chair. It’s their baby and it’s beautiful and no series of screw ups or waste or worse will ever convince them otherwise.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Is “Department of Public Safety” too squishy?
December 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Wait — shouldn’t all government agencies have the name “power” in them, so we can understand that they aren’t powerless?
December 6th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I thought the whole “homeland” theme came from the the administration – like, the “homeland has been attacked.” I found it really creepy, but didn’t think anyone else noticed.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:02 am
As may be obvious, I only took two years of German, and the last semester was firmly in the era of Google Language Tools.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Re Matthew’s comment “but DHS does border security and disaster relief, not the FBI’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism functions.”
—————
Sigh.
Well, they all work for Dick Cheney so I’m not sure the formal Order of Battle matters. But the FBI doesn’t even count as light infantry. Even a National Guard platoon could kick HRT’s ass from here to Kansas.
Whereas there’s a new DoD warfighting command called NORTHCOM. Tasked with fighting wars..er, I mean “providing support for civil authorities” — on the North American continent. I think we know what that means, don’t we?
The Pentagon chops combat units around to the warfighting commands –aka the Unified Commands — based on what the situation is. So when it chops an ACTIVE ARMY Brigade to NORTHCOM, that’s preview of coming attractions.
See http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
Our limpwristed liberals –with their distain for all things military, will be behind the barbed wire before they have a clue.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I suspect “helping people at home” will soon rank up there with “spreading democracy”.
From the cited Army Times article :
“They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack…
…The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
———–
I’d like to propose SLC as a test subject the next time he says “Hama Rules”
December 6th, 2008 at 11:14 am
The term “homeland” was used all through William Cohen’s 1997 “Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review,” and I thought it was creepy then, but then, 1997 is like a million, billion years ago so of course no one remembers.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I loved Peggy Noonan’s comment in her article:
“I remembered the observation of a journalist who had covered Russia. The Russian newspapers had generally played down Mr. Obama’s victory, she said, because it got in the way of the establishment line: that the corrupt American democracy is composed of two warring family machines that have the system wired and controlled with the help of their corporate oligarch cronies. It’s not a real democracy but a pretend democracy, and a hypocritical one. This helps the Russians rationalize and excuse their infirm hold on democratic ways and manners. And then the black man from Chicago with no longtime machine or money is elected . . .So the Russian press muted its coverage. Mr. Obama’s victory upset their story line.”
—————
Who does Peggy Noonan think gave Obama $750 Million !!! Little fucking elves from Ireland???
December 6th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
A lot of the money does come from donors who who *began* under $200. Many of them kept going, but eventually stayed below $1000. IIRC, a little more than half the haul comes from donors whose contributions total less than $1000.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Salon had a great article about DHS two months ago. They discussed how difficult it would be to restructure it because the bureaucratic blob has already taken over and is structurally intertwined with the other agencies.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/16/homeland_security/
December 6th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I don’t really blaim you for attacking Lieberman, but he didn’t really come up with this. It was the Hart-Rudman Commision. “Road Map For National Security: Imperative For Change.” Though I suppose they got it from somewhere too. Also Bush introduced the term Homeland Security to broad use by creating an Office of Homeland Security.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Re: Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all.
I agree the term sounds odd in American English, but it’s hardly “Nazi-ish” Terms like “homeland” Motherland”, and “Fatherland” are very common in other European languages. Latin “patria” is literally “Fatherland”. In colonial days Englishmen abroad spoke of the “Motherland”. The Nazis did not invent “Das Vaterland”. The first half in “Metropolis” is “Mother” in Greek. Russia was “Holy Mother Russia”. And so forth.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
JonF:
That’s true, but the reason “homeland” sounds odd is principally because so much of its past usage implied that there were other territories under permanent control by the “homeland.” In that respect, I think it’s different from Father- or Mother-land, though both those can also, in the context of a national government department, imply the indistinct existence of provinces under the control of the “motherland.”
The real issue boils down to it meaning, linguistically, “sourceland.” In government especially, it suggests an intent and a duty to go beyond national boundaies at establish authority elsewhere.
So when we say “homeland security” it almost sounds like Iraq, for example, is a satellite land rather than a country we intend to occupy for a brief period of time and then leave.
Thinking of America as your homeland is fine if you’re in the Louvre, less so if you’re a state actor busy establishing military control of territory across the globe.
And Joe? Really? It was his name? Truly? What a fuck.
December 6th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
The Department of Homeland Security concept was spelled out in the Hart-Rudmann report which was on Bush’s desk when he assumed office. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I don’t think the purpose was criminalizing everything, spying on American citizens, or taking a dragnet approach to intelligence.
December 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
During World War II, the military term for “the Homeland” was Zone of Interior, but we already have a Department of Interior, so I guess that’s not an option.
The most fracked up part about DHS is that it is the lead antiterrorism Department and yet the lead antiterrorism law enforcement agency, the FBI, is over in the Justice Department. Meanwhile the Secret Service, once part of the Treasury Department (and they still go after counterfeiters) is now part of DHS but plays only a secondary role to the FBI in homeland security.
Look at the Secret Service mission statement (and props for getting the buzzword ‘infrastructure’ in there):
The mission of the United States Secret Service is to safeguard the nation’s financial infrastructure and payment systems to preserve the integrity of the economy, and to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites and National Special Security Events.
http://www.secretservice.gov/mission.shtml
What happened is when DHS was organized, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil was willing to cede power to be a team player but AG Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller were not. The FBI should have been moved to DHS, or at the very least its National Security Branch, (i.e. counterintelligence / antiterrorism) but that didn’t happen.
The fastest way out to fix this mess is easy– the Secret Service swaps jobs with the FBI, financial crimes go to FBI and national security goes to the Secret Service.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
the word has no Nazi associations! you hear “Heimat” in lots of German works; say, Wagnerian opera….oops.
seriously, I think this is just another consequence of American ignorance of history. I mean, do we think Lieberman wanted the associations with 19th century German romantic nationalism?
the word “homeland” has no correspondingly deep emotional connotations in English; something like “hometown security department” would be more effective….(even more repulsive, but more effective)
December 6th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Did I miss a comment, or I am actually the first person to ask why the hell did you go see that movie?
December 6th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
But beyond that, you can add it to the pile of the large number of films that portrays the Department of Homeland Security as some kind of incredibly badass intelligence or paramilitary outfit. I don’t understand why this keeps happening.
Especially when one takes note of the fact that DHS Sec. Chertoff is every bit as big a fuckup as Heckuva Job Brownie was.
Which reminds me, you know those particularized collective nouns like “a covey of quail” or “a pride of lions”? Seems to me that if we’re talking about Bush Administration officials in the plural, “a fuckup of Bushies” is the appropriate term.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Matt went to see the Punisher movie so he can remind himself how superior he is to all these tough guys because he has a philosophy degree from Harvard – and a blog – and a book (which didn’t sell).
Meanwhile, Summer Glau – who’s probably half his weight – could kick his ass from Washington to Mumbai.
Meanwhile, why don’t they call DHS “S.H.I.E.L.D.”? Everybody knows what that is – the REAL super-secret protect everybody from everything agency – with SUPERHEROES no less! Run by some REALLY BAD DUDE with an eye-patch! Who even WOLVERINE respects! Even CAPTAIN AMERICA has worked there! You can’t get more “patriotic homeland” than that!
December 6th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Lo Tech: That would be “clusterfuck of Bushies” – no need for a new term.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:17 am
I may see the Punisher movie tonight – that or “Transporter 3″ which I already know will be fantastic – hey, Jason Statham is in it (again)!
So then I can predictably tell Matt his movie critic credentials suck as badly as his foreign policy credentials – especially since he STILL doesn’t know that “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” is one of the best TV shows on the air and certainly the first or second best sci-fi show.
As proved by the following from the Sarah Connor Society Web site:
TSCC gained 1.2 million viewers from the previous week!
TV by the Numbers also reports that TSCC had the seventh highest DVR percentage for the week of November 3rd – 9th with a 30.2% increase in time-shifted viewing.
Amazon has TSCC listed as the 4th best-selling TV series thru their Video-on-Demand service and 14th best-selling overall!
iTunes has “Self Made Man” (last Monday’s episode) listed as 6th Top TV Show and 2nd Top Sci-Fi Show.
Some reviews of this past episode:
i09 likes when TSCC engages in weird digressions:
“Top ho! It’s a 1920s Terminator speakeasy party, with flappers doing the Charleston and some positively ripping cocktails. I’ve been excited for the killing-machine-meets-Valentino episode of Sarah Connor Chronicles since I read some pages from the script, and it was just as mold-breaking as I’d hoped. I’m beginning to think this show’s at its best when it’s doing a weird digression, rather than trying to push the overall plot forward…”
IGN thinks the show is inventive and creative:
“…but the fact that this show went down this road is more proof it’s far more inventive and creative than one would believe given the dismal state of its ratings. Who hasn’t wondered about what a Terminator would do further in the past? Not only do we get to see a Terminator wielding a tommy-gun, we get to see Summer Glau wielding a tommy-gun. That’s what’s known as a win-win…”
TV Squad was thinking Summer was brilliant:
“…This episode was entirely Summer Glau, and she was brilliant in it. I think this is her best acting on the show to date…”
Side Reel thinks that TSCC is “aging like a fine wine”:
‘…The latest episode (Self Made Man) showcases what the show has grown into which is a search for the souls of each individual character, literally robotic or not…”
CliqueClackTV argued that “Terminator has quietly become one of the best shows on TV“:
Some of you may still be skeptical. Perhaps you watched last season and you weren’t that impressed, perhaps you’re just a big fan of the movie franchise and can’t bring yourself to watch Terminator on the small screen. If you fit either of these categories I encourage you to give it another chance.
Eric of Eddyfications traded Heroes for TSCC or “Terminator for Heroes” (no, really, it’s a good thing):
Now, the show that has me that intrigued is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. What started as a struggling knockoff of the films has developed into a very interesting bit of science fiction. Lots of believable intrigue in a storyline that is as complicated as Heroes, but evolved in a much more entertaining fashion. And the commentary it provides with regards to human interaction and how machines can/or cannot emulate these things is very fun to watch.
And Big Dumb Object agreed:
What The Sarah Connor Chronicles succeeds at is creating a world of interesting characters, about which we are constantly discovering something. It’s the classic story essence of creating a situation to which a character must react, where that reaction shows us something new about the character. And consequently we come to care about the characters, or at least retain interest in them. Even the Ex-Rockstar Scottish T1000, of which I have been critical, had an episode looking after a child, which showed us something about the robot and it’s intentions.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:38 am
“Homeland is a Nazi-ish word.”
That’s a pretty dumb comment. Every nationalist movement, evil or benign, has had some concept of a homeland, not just the Nazis. Yes, it’s un-American, but no it’s not Nazi-ish.
Hollywood apparently thinks that the public is desperate for a great Hulk movie and a great Punisher movie, and that film companies must, out of duty, keep producing these films until they get them right. Second theory: being really pissed off and raining down violent vigilante justice on people are fool proof American movie premises, despite what the profits from past Hulk and Punisher films might indicate.
December 7th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Ok, I saw the film. It was average, not really “bad”. Not great acting by pretty much anybody in it, but the Jigsaw guy was the worst caricature of a Marvel villain I’ve ever seen. The original Jigsaw in the comic, although a repeat foe of Frank Castle, was never one of the great story lines in the Punisher series, anyway, but was probably picked for the movie because it would be at least recognizable once the Hollywood hacks mangled the concept.
The movie basically tried to be like the first Batman movie, with Jigsaw doing the Joker bit. All the “overhead city” views like the most recent Batman movie. Not terribly effective.
Nonetheless, the Frank Castle portrayed in the film was pretty much the Frank Castle portrayed in the comics: obsessed, paranoid, brutal and well-armed. Microchip was OK, but not enough high-tech from him in the movie compared to the comics. He ended up dead unfortunately – it would have been better to keep him around for the next one.
I’m looking forward to “Transporter 3″, which should be better, paradoxically because those movies don’t aspire to be anything but pure action. And Jason Statham is a hell of a better actor than this guy Stevenson.
Meanwhile, I bought “Wanted” on DVD today. Looking forward to some hot Angelina!
December 7th, 2008 at 9:36 am
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December 7th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Er .. Richard, you will notice that Terminator characters don’t spend much time sitting around watching TV.
There’s something kinda hilarious about watching sci-fi TV shows about a dismal , apocalptic future for entertainment while outside the stock indexes crash through the basement floor. Shouldn’t you be out at a gun range or doing pushups or something.
Apropos of nothing in particular, Rogue River Oregon is one of the few spots in the USA with zero chance of receiving nuclear fallout. Is also more than a gas tank of gas from Seattle and San Francisco — and a LONG way from Los Angeles.
That’s why Mel Tappan — who started the Survivalist movement back in the 1970s — moved there. (The dumbshits who moved to Montana , in contrast, never heard of Malmstrom Air Force Base — or looked at the monthly Jet Stream maps.)
Check out http://www.survivalblog.com.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:51 am
PS You might check out Kevin Costner’s movie “The Postman” if you haven’t seen it yet. It was put out years ago.
December 7th, 2008 at 9:55 am
PS Shit, I forgot to mention Mel Tappan’s book “Tappan on Survival”. Now available online at http://www.geocities.com/mark_l_anderson/faqs/tapp.txt
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed …”
W.B. Yeats
December 7th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Mr. Williams: You missed the best lines from that poem. “The best lack all conviction / while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Have fun your bunker.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Re ty “you missed the best lines”
————-
and YOU left out:
“and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned”
Sounds like all us progressives getting the word on Obama’s political appointments.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Don, I know all about Mel Tappan – he’s a nutcase, like most of the Survivalists. Their advice is OK, it’s their brains that are fried.
By the way, the problem with Terminator this season is precisely that the Connor team spends most of their time futzing around with side plots and personal issues and very little time actually trying to stop Skynet from coming into existence. THEY might as well be watching TV!
Skynet is currently a heartbeat away from existing, supposedly, since Catherine Weaver, the T-1001 from the future, has hooked up “The Turk” to Cromartie’s body. And the Connors STILL don’t have a clue what the hell is going on.
The only guy who knows is former FBI agent Ellison – and Sarah blew him off in Mexico, refusing to take him on the team! How stupid was that? They aren’t even following him around to see what he knows!
At least Cameron had the smarts to search his yard for Cromartie’s body – but it wasn’t there because he’d already turned it over to Weaver.
Meanwhile Sarah is obsessing over three dots seen in her dreams and in blood on a wall, while John is completely clueless that his hot new girl friend is being run by some anti-Cameron Resistance freak from the future who’s suckered his uncle into the plot to get rid of Cameron. Everybody’s likely to end up dead from that one because Cameron takes no prisoners.
They’re practically morons on the show this season, with the sole exception of the Terminators, all of whom pretty much have it together – except Cameron when the glitches take over. Fortunately they seem to have subsided recently.
Here’s the bottom line: despite the economic crashes going on, there’s no evidence yet that total social destruction is in the cards. And I’m so low on the economy totem pole that pretty much nothing going on in the economy now is having any impact on me at all. As long as I have at least two paying clients, I’m doing fine. And the worse the economy gets, the more likely I’ll get work, because somebody has to keep the computers running and I’m the cheapest guy around. And once I get a little ahead on my computer hardware, I can upgrade my income nicely with some computer security work and maybe some hacking on the side.
At that point, whatever goes down, I’ll be way ahead most of the morons here in dealing with it. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I have on my hard drive.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Re Richard’s comment “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I have on my hard drive.”
————
1) Just watch out if someone with a curiously flat monotone in their voice shows up and says “Tell me what you have on your hard drive…. Richard. “.
Heh heh heh
Computer security is hot at the moment — government’s going apeshit.
2) By the way, ever been down in Los Angeles? To the Los Angeles Air Force Base, home of something called the “Space and Missile Command”??
Look at this document, dated 1985:
http://www.goes-r.gov/procurement/flight_documents/mil-hdbk-340A%20vol%201%20and%202.pdf
Check out paragraph 7 — says where to send comments.
Or this document — search for “Skynet” http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/warning/sbirs-l/RFPATCH.htm
Note the comment 3 lines up.
3) You can find Los Angeles Air Force Base on Google maps. But try to find Skynet Street.
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