If a terrorist had set fire to Southern California and displaced 500,000 people, President Bush would schedule an "address to the nation" in which he pledged to spare no expense in confronting this new tactic in the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). But since it's just a human-assisted natural disaster, we can probably count on him to do too little, too late. The federal response won't be as blatantly irresponsible as his administration was in the case of Hurricane Katrina (there are PR issues to consider, after all), but it is likely to be grossly inadequate nonetheless.

What if climate change, outbreaks of disease, entrenched poverty, and other threats to human life were treated as security issues? Would it help or hurt efforts to address these challenges?

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