Story highlights Stephen Flynn: Donald Trump poses a clear and present danger to the United States

Electing Trump would undermine all the steps we have taken to create a safer and more secure union, writes Flynn

Stephen Flynn is a professor and co-director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security at Northeastern University. He is author of "America the Vulnerable" and "The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation." A retired Coast Guard officer, he has advised both the Bush and Obama administrations, including as the homeland security policy adviser for President Obama's 2008 transition team. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.



(CNN) There are three cardinal rules for homeland security, and Donald Trump has been breaking each one with abandon.

First, don't overstate the threat. Doing so only indiscriminately elevates public anxiety. It also creates the toxic conditions within our body politic that lead to costly and harmful overreactions, which end up rewarding our adversaries for engaging in acts of terror.

Stephen Flynn

Generating widespread fear about a real, but limited danger serves no useful end. Remember the color-coded warning system that was trotted out after 9/11? It was widely criticized, and for good reason. What were people supposed to do when the US Department of Homeland Security declared condition orange or condition red? The Obama administration quite rightly abandoned it.

Playing up a sense of pervasive and indiscriminate threat that leaves Americans feeling helpless and has two dangerous outcomes. For the already anxious, it fuels paranoia. For the skeptics, it provides fodder for their apathy and denial.

Second, don't overstate what can be done about the threat. After 9/11, elected leaders and national security and homeland security officials would often say : "Terrorists have to be right only once, while we have to be right 100% of the time." The intent was to convey commitment toward doing whatever it takes to prevent the next act of terrorism. But the outcome was to create overinflated public expectations about what can and was being done to make the homeland safe. In what human endeavor has government ever been 100% successful? When the inevitable happens, and the nation feels as though it has been misled, public trust ends up strewn among the casualties.

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