Curious George and the man with the yellow threat

This Friday, American children of all races, religions and backgrounds will celebrate our nation's 227th birthday by darting under and around tables adorned with at least one American flag. Fathers will celebrate over an open flame with an eight-pack of Ball Park Franks, while their wives brag about their children and gossip about everyone else's. Just before 10 p.m., the sun will retire behind the Olympic Mountains east of Seattle, just as it did a couple hours earlier behind the cornfields of Kansas, and three hours earlier behind the southern tip of Manhattan and Lady Liberty.

But the young and the young at heart may not get to see their patriotism strewn across the sky this Fourth of July. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence is promoting a "code yellow" from its security advisory system -- meaning there is a significant chance of terrorist attacks over the holiday weekend.

The DHS's perpetual warning is prompting many cities, including Seattle, to consider canceling major fireworks displays, leaving many patriots and partygoers resentful, and leaving me wondering.

Is the DHS really helping America?

After a year and a half, the conglomeration of 22 organizations, over 160,000 employees and an annual budget of $36.2 billion has done little more than create a color chart to keep the American public informed on how scared our government is. And of course, those wobbly shot commercials with Tom Ridge saying, "I can be afraid or I can be ready." Tom, if a dirty bomb goes off in my front yard, I am going to be afraid whether or not I have dried fruit and a bottle of water stored away.

In theory, the DHS is a great advancement in American productivity. For the first time in history, you can have relief organizations in Florida and South Dakota working together to assist with the floods in North Virginia or the droughts in New Mexico. You can have the Immigration and Naturalization Services, CIA and FBI giving each other continuous updates on violations of civil rights.

But in practice, the DHS has been anything but productive. At its creation the DHS had three goals: protecting citizen rights, enhancing disaster relief services and ensuring security.

But the president's homeland-security objectives for 2004 don't say a word about fixing the problems that hit the United States every day. In short, the DHS is starting to show its real colors as the brainchild of a child's brain (I mean Bush, for all you rightists who care more about tax cuts than public education).

Bush has found something on which the American people will support him, and this one-trick pony's been classically conditioned to push the terror threat.

Preventing terrorist attacks, reducing U.S. vulnerability to terrorist attacks and minimizing the damage from terrorist attacks are Bush's three goals for 2004.

No, nothing about solving the problems that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, like cancer, AIDS, obesity and poverty. Those obviously aren't worthy of the president's agenda. Bush is actually planning to take money away from AIDS and cancer research to fund the administering of an unproven anthrax vaccine for the military -- which already has an effective anthrax vaccine.

In reality, Bush hasn't created the department he tear-jerked Congress into creating with proposals just two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Instead of a structured governmental organization for the common wealth of American citizens, he has created a second Department of Defense (DOD).

Harry Truman created the original DOD to unite American military forces in protecting the United States. In Truman's era the DOD didn't use the word "preemptive." But it's not Truman's era, and this isn't his DOD. Bush's DOD has changed its focus from protecting Americans to imposing American will, and the DHS was a way of making us still feel safe while our soldiers, vaccine-filled and ready to impose, are flown across the world.

We've been distracted by the catchphrases and fear charts. We've missed a genuine opportunity to better the United States. We've still got a chance to make it right. The groundwork is still there -- with a little revamping, the DHS could be a useful cabinet, a conglomerate that could bring brotherly love out of Philadelphia and eradicate neighborly paranoia.

Bush still has a chance to leave a positive legacy, but it will start with the realization that terrorism isn't killing Americans on a substantial level. We can't turn our back on it -- terrorism is a very real issue around the world -- but a military that defends its people rather than imposes its will and a friendlier foreign policy may do a lot more to combat terrorism, here and abroad, than training a generation to look over its shoulder.

The Fourth of July should be a time for us to celebrate and reflect: to celebrate our fortune for living in a country with unlimited possibility and to reflect on the ways we are utilizing that.