It took the worst terrorist attacks in our nation's history, but now the secret is out: Republicans love big government. 
Even though, like all Republican candidates, he ran for office promising to reduce the size of the federal government, George Bush has made it even bigger by creating the Office of Homeland Security -- a new Cabinet-level office headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. It's a bad idea and it's bound to fail. 
Bush, in fact, is acting more and more like the stereotypical Democrats he railed against. 
Their solution to every problem, he used to complain, is to spend more money and expand the role of government -- which he has done, by executive order. So, this time, he has no one to blame but himself. 
You almost have to feel sorry for Tom Ridge. He wanted to be vice-president. He did, in fact, make it to the short list, only to be passed over for Dick Cheney. Now he finally gets a big federal job, but it's a meaningless one. His new office has two fundamental flaws: it's not needed; and, even if it were needed, it hasn't been given the tools necessary to carry out its mandate. 
Granted, we Americans must do a better job defending ourselves against terrorism. That's self-evident. But it's also self-evident why the terrorists were so successful on September 11. There were plenty of government agencies responsible for security -- they just weren't doing their job. 
The breakdown in America's once-vaunted security apparatus is astounding. We were provided plenty of clues that an attack on the United States was likely; but the CIA and the FBI simply ignored them. 
Philippine authorities warned us six years ago of terrorist plans to destroy public buildings using hijacked commercial airliners. We did nothing. Two of the hijackers were on the FBI's most-wanted list. Yet they lived openly in the United States for five years: renting apartments, taking flying lessons, going to bars and strip clubs, using their credit cards -- and the FBI never found them. The CIA had thousands of documents intercepted from terrorist organizations, but they were all in Arabic and never translated. 
Equally scary is our lack of intelligence in terrorist circles. As investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in the October 8 edition of The New Yorker, what's needed is the old-fashioned man-in-Havana, relocated to Kabul: "Today, in Afghanistan, or anywhere in the Middle East or South Asia, a C.I.A. operative would have to speak the local language and be able to blend in." 
Then, based on interviews with many CIA agents, Hersh adds the chilling kicker: "It's possible that there isn't a single such officer operating today inside Islamic fundamentalist circles." 
Clearly, the FBI and the CIA screwed up. Big time. But, (at the risk of sounding like a Republican), that doesn't mean we need more big government. That means we need to shake up existing agencies, fire the idiots who were asleep at the switch and put in new leaders who will carry out their responsibilities. 
However, if you're going to make the mistake of creating a new government agency to protect the homeland, at least you should do it through legislation, in order to give it all the tools it needs to do the job. President Bush did not. Instead, by executive order, he created a paper tiger. 
As director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge has no teeth. He is a Cabinet officer without an agency. There is no legislation giving him money or power. He is responsible for coordinating the work of 46 different government agencies, with no control over any of them. He can't force them to share information. He can't add to or subtract from their budgets. He can't call them up and order them to do anything. All he can do is persuade and cajole. Good luck. 
The White House counters that, even without legislative authority, Ridge will be effective because he is a friend of the president's and has an office right down the hall from the Oval Office. Nonsense. That's pure spin. Wait till the first time Ridge tries giving orders to Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld or Attorney General John Ashcroft. He'll wish he were back in Pennsylvania. 
Under Bush's plan, the Homeland Security Czar has the same rank and power as the Drug Czar. That says it all. We know what a colossal failure the war on illegal drugs has been. 
We can expect no more from the new war on domestic terrorism.