Mobilize America's foot soldiers

Congress is busy creating a Department of Homeland Security. But another new federal entity that could be making a vital contribution is barely mentioned: the Citizen Corps. It aims to enlist millions of Americans as "first responders" once a major attack occurs, and as the "eyes and ears" of public authorities trying to prevent attacks.

Polls show that Americans are eager to give of their time (say, an evening a week and a weekend day each month) to serve as volunteers patrolling the surroundings of major public assets, from water resources to national monuments. Some people are quite ready to sign up and be trained as backups for firefighters, medical teams, police, and border patrols.

For some roles little preparation is required. Volunteers are expected to take over desk jobs, such as answering phones at fire stations when firefighters rush out following a major attack. Before 9/11, thousands upon thousands of people had already volunteered to take extensive first aid training to serve as emergency medical technicians. They are on call in the event of a major car pileup or other disaster. Training many more people would help in coping with a major attack.

There are also hundreds of thousands of volunteer firefighters whose number could be expanded. The same is true for auxiliary police, the voluntary police squads that assist mostly with traffic and crowd control, as well as patrolling parks and other public gathering places. Most of these roles require only limited training.

But very little of this has happened. The drive to mobilize Americans to shoulder a significant part of homeland protection has not taken off. The reason is not merely that 9/11 is beginning to recede from memory and that Americans are becoming inured to frequent but vague warnings about attacks. The drive to mobilize volunteers has been muddled because it has been folded into familiar sorts of do-good activities, which are fine, but do not serve homeland protection.

Bush has called for Americans to donate 4,000 hours of service during their lifetimes. And he followed his call by forming the USA Freedom Corps, which has incorporated a slew of voluntary bodies, including the Senior Corps, the Teacher Corps, VISTA, the Peace Corps, the Citizen Corps, and a half-dozen others.

Bush's civic initiatives have been called "communitarianism." Why? Because many of his proposals embrace an alternative to the liberal-conservative debate by supporting the idea that "the rights of the individual must be balanced against the interests of the society as a whole" and that "values and morality ... can best be fostered by community organizations," as Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank wrote.

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