Homeland security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Homeland security - Essay Example Pre-emption is the response of the wise based on our deep understanding of our enemy. It must continue to be our main mode of response to an enemy that has no regard for life, rules of war or protecting non-combatants and the innocent. Our objectives in pre-emption are to protect the American people and her allies from harm and reduce to zero whenever possible the probability of harm, destruction to property, or death of our citizens and allies. The situations in which pre-emption is appropriate are in strengthening public safety and proactive response to terrorist threats. From a position of strength, the possibility of more than proportionate retaliation can be a very strong and powerful deterrent against attacks. Occasionally, we can be off-guard and our enemies can take advantage of this and can succeed attacking and harming us at an inopportune moment. Retaliation provides us a way to impress to our enemies how costly an attack can be for their allies and themselves. More than proportionate retaliation is best implemented in the home bases of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Domestically, however, more than proportionate retaliation can only be implemented by prosecution up to the maximum penalties allowed by law and by invoking laws that have the highest penalties. A combination of pre-emption and more than proportionate retaliation are most appropriate for dealing with our enemies. Pre-emption enables us to prevent and confront an attack while a policy of more than proportionate retaliation can serve to paralyze our enemy by confining her to do an endless benefit-cost estimation given a highly militarily superior USA: if they do their benefit-cost computations correctly as we do our homework well, a policy of more than proportionate retaliation can prevent an attack. However, a policy of more than proportionate retaliation should NOT be interpreted that