this idea that every issue (e.g. the financial crisis) is a security issue is truly an artifact of our moment. it displays the continuing mutation of the u.s. into a security or police state, in which the model of response to anything, the basic form of understanding, is a domestic application of a military-style command structure. of course it entails that the response must be a state response, since the security of the nation (i.e. "homeland," a term that obama likes as much as bush did) is a state matter. it is also, of course, just an attempt to render the terrain a complete mind-numbing confusion, and to emphasize in every context government responsibility for the safety of citizens, to inject the tinge of physical fear into every matter. for gore, global warming is our greatest security challenge. for tom friedman or whomever, it's education. you might raise the terrorist threat level to red on the basis of a warm autumn, or because citibank is having problems, or because the sheiks in dubai lost their seventieth billion, or because sat's have leveled off, or...well, just because. to my way of thinking the greatest national security threat we face is horseshit. 

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress yesterday that instability in countries around the world caused by the current global economic crisis, rather than terrorism, is the primary near-term security threat to the United States.