Problem
I believe that a catastrophic terrorist event in the United States would considerably affect homeland security. The reason I came to this conclusion is because of how the United States has reacted to such events in the past. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the US Patriot Act, and the Department of Homeland Security Act all came to be due to either a growing risk of terrorism or an actual terrorist act (Martin, 2020). By nature, the United States, and other countries, are mostly reactive when it comes to things like this. After all, in the case of the US Patriot Act, both the people and the government were in agreeance over a general reduction of personal rights (mostly rights to privacy) for the purpose of national security. In my opinion, I cannot think of an occasion that would replicate the American public surrendering privacy rights to the federal government in cases other than events as extraordinary as 9/11. Almost 13 years after 9/11, the US Freedom Act aimed to reduce some of the surveillance authorities given to the federal government because of the fact that there hasn't been a terrorist attack of a similar scale to 9/11 since then. This being said, I see no reason why another catastrophic attack wouldn't prompt Americans to revert back to something similar to the original US Patriot Act out of panic. However, with the influx of domestic terrorist events in the United States, I feel like homeland security is more likely to change in order to address those needs in the near future. After all, domestic terrorism seems to have the attention of the public in numbers far greater than that of international terrorism in its current state.
What would be a good response to a discussion like this?
Martin, G. (2022). Essentials of terrorism: Concepts and controversies (6th ed.). SAGE Publications Inc.