If you will recall, the Homeland Defense was created to coordinate the various agencies to work together. Unfortunately, they were not doing that before Sept 11th. The administration has stated that they well know, and take seriously the fact that their most important duty is to provide for the common defense. The things that trouble you have always been done, they are not new at all.
I understand your point but I'm not sure that creating yet another layer of bureaucracy is the best solution for this problem. At the beginning I was but as I read about the legislation that creates the office and what it entails I begin to question what this new office will really be used for. If it just created an office to coordinate activities that would be fine but there is an attendant huge expansion of power that I don't think is justified. Just one example is the 'sneak and peak' where they can search a residence and not tell anybody! In some cases it doesn't even require a warrant. And I have to question the logic of your last statement, if they have always been done, then why do we need a new office with expanded powers?
As it turns out the information that various agencies had about what the terrorists were doing in this country that could have prevented the attacks on Sept.11 wasn't overlooked due to lack of coordination. Important observations were rejected and pigeonholed for politically correct reasons and nothing about the new office would do anything to change that. If anything the experience of many citizens at airports trying to board their flights demonstrates the problem is worse. Magnify the behavior of gate security attendants by the power of the office of Homeland Security and the prospect is fightening.
Historically, every time we rush to institute these kind of changes in response to individual events we fail to forsee the dangers that they pose and the inevitable misuse that that kind of power engenders. What would Nixon have done with such an office? Remember Craig Livingstone and the 500 FBI files in the White House? What do you think was happening there anyway?
We know who the enemy is and we know basically where they are. That every further attempt has been foiled since last year is proof that we already have all the resources needed to protect the nation. And I will say it again, the reason we didn't see what was coming was because the Federal Gov was distracted with that plethora of socialist programs that it shouldn't be focusing on in the first place. We could be doing things NOW that would be far more effective than creating a new bureaucracy. I detailed just some of these in my first post.
I'd be willing to wager that 30 years on down the line our childern will damn us for creating this office just as we now damn our parents and grandparents for 'social security' and an income tax on just the top 1% of the 'wealthy' that has led us into the socialist boondoggle that we face today and is a greater threat to our freedom than the whole Islamic world.