Fight Smart

The United States has expended a godawful lot of time, money, energy, and lives in the pursuit of national security since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Much of the effort has paid dividends. But a great deal has been wasted on trivial, misguided, or simply wrongheaded pursuits.

There is considerable disagreement over which is which -- whether, for instance, waterboarding or the Patriot Act have done more harm than good. But there are some things surely everyone can agree the U.S. ought to be doing or not doing. Unfortunately, the nation often seems to get the two mixed up.

Take foreign visitors. Nearly 3 million foreigners come to the U.S. on a visa each year. Most leave when they should. But some -- tens, perhaps even hundreds, of thousands -- do not, and the U.S. does not keep track of them. Yet untold numbers of Americans find themselves frustrated in their travels because they have ended up on a terrorist watch list, owing to the similarity between their names and the names of suspected foreign terrorists.

Meanwhile, U.S. airports repeatedly have failed to catch fake bombs carried by undercover agents. Such failure is not uncommon. Screeners at LAX, for example, missed fake bombs or bomb parts in three out of four instances, according to a TSA report. Screeners at O'Hare in Chicago missed 60 percent of the fake bombs.

According to another report, Customs and Border Protection agents have been unable to stop roughly 1 in 10 illegal immigrants and drug or weapons smugglers coming into the United States. The study did not look at those entering the U.S. surreptitiously, but those waltzing brazenly through airports and official border checkpoints.

The National Asset Database, a list of potential terrorist targets, includes only a small percentage of the nation's major financial institutions. But it does include the Amish Country Popcorn factory, a petting zoo in Woodville, Ala., and the Sweetwater Flea Market in Knoxville, Tenn. Farmers in Maryland have been nonplussed by the possible inclusion of their propane tanks, used to warm chicken houses, as potential terrorist targets as well. ("Heck, if it blows, you've got barbecued chicken," said one.)

The misuse of federal homeland security grants -- which have underwritten a fallout shelter in Huntsville, Ala., I.E.D. bomb-detection equipment in Colorado, and fitness equipment in Pompano Beach, Fla. -- is already well-plowed ground. But homeland-security pork epitomizes the problem of misplaced priorities that seems to bedevil the broader approach. Eight years and counting since 9/11, the country still seems, in many cases, to be racing the engine with the transmission in park. A little less effort, more wisely directed, might produce better results.