The Department of Homeland Security has faced serious challenges in integrating 22 different federal agencies while simultaneously trying to protect America from terrorist threats and natural disasters. We’ve been watching here for some time now, and with 2005 coming to a close, it’s time to take stock of where we are with respect to homeland security.

The department is one of government’s biggest bureaucracies, and while it has had its successes, it has also had its monstrous failures.

One of its major failures has been the pork-barrel bonanza surrounding homeland security contracts, which have bought us very little real security, while fattening up particular Congressional districts.

Another has been its monstrous bureaucracy, with its turf wars, infighting and inefficiencies.

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, subscription only) has a great editorial which summarizes the situation. I’ll give you a couple of choice cuts.

When the Department of Homeland Security was created in November 2002, largely at the instigation of Congressional Democrats, it was touted as the biggest restructuring of the federal government in more than 50 years. The new department’s “overriding and urgent mission,” said President Bush, was “securing the American homeland and protecting the American people.” Three years later, the bureaucratic deck chairs have been moved. But are we more secure as a result of it? . . .

But the points aptly illustrate the underlying problem with our collective homeland security apparatus, which is that no government bureaucracy is ever going to be the kind of well-oiled machine that can reliably and effectively prevent domestic terrorist threats. And this is to say nothing of natural disasters.

Instead, what we have is a kind of antiterror version of France’s pre-World War II Maginot Line; an expensive, highly visible static defense against a nimble adversary. Congress loves it because it offers the chance to throw money at domestic constituencies, and liberals love it because it allows them to sound hawkish on terror without having to fire a shot. The rest of us, however, need to be realistic about its abilities. — Wall Street Journal

We also need to be realistic about whether government is the appropriate means to homeland security at all. It’s never going to be efficient or work very well. Bureaucracy doesn’t, pretty much by definition. The answers, I’m afraid, will be found elsewhere, and we need to start looking for them, before the next terrorist attack.

Happy new year!