Posts Tagged ‘national security’

Mission Impossible

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Question for you Tea Party devotees: If you hate government so much, where were you when the Bush administration was building the massive, secret, overreaching, unwieldy national security apparatus after 9/11? Today, more than 1,200 government agencies and 1,900 private companies at more than 10,000 sites, employing a mind-boggling 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, who produce 50,000 pages of intelligence annually, are tripping all over themselves and each other to gather intelligence and supposedly keep Americans safe. And if you think all these good folks are spending all their time ferreting out threats from al Qaeda and not spying on ordinary Americans, I have a poppy farm in Afghanistan to sell you. Besides being inherently unworkable, this vast decentralized system has no chance of communicating within its own bureaucracy effectively, let alone responding quickly and accurately to genuine threats. Oh, for thosde simpler times when the just the CIA and the FBI couldn’t connect the dots.

Topics: , , , , , , , | 35 Comments »

TAPS

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

It’s clearly time to end the ludicrous “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allowed gays to serve their country only if they hid their sexual preference. The nation has moved on, but the military, evidently, hasn’t. They want to kick the can down the road with a year-long “study” of the potential effects of ending the policy. The arguments against allowing openly gay soldiers is precisely the argument used against integrating the armed forces and against allowing women in combat units–that other soldiers wouldn’t accept them and the morale of the military, and thus its effectiveness, would be compromised. Well, folks, we have black soldiers and we have women soldiers, and we seem to be doing fine. And a few years after we allow gays to serve openly, the American military will still be strong, and we’ll be wondering what the fuss was all about.  There’s no point in putting this off another day.

Topics: , , , , , , | No Comments »

Voice on the Tape

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics, and neither side has a monopoly. That said, former vice president Dick Cheney is taking it to a whole new level with his constant attacks on the Obama administration’s conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the handling of terror cases. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that any criticism of the Bush/Cheney administration was undermining the morale of the troops, giving aid and comfort to then enemy and emboldening the terrorists. The word “treason” was even whispered in certain conservative circles. I won’t even go into the long-standing tradition of previous administrations not criticizing the current one, especially in wartime. That rule no longer applies, either. I’m left to conclude that the Republicans will do and say anything to undermine any Democratic administration, no matter what the cost to the nation.

Topics: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Air Safety

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Yet another take on air safety. Short of strip- and cavity-searching every passenger and hand searching every piece of luggage, I have no idea how you make air travel perfectly safe from terrorists, and neither does anyone else, especially the people in charge of actually trying to make it safe. Their bureaucratic approach so far has made air travel, once so simple, an inconvenient trial at best and a nightmare of delay and inefficiency at worst. It’s impossible to know if all these security measures have actually made us any safer, but I doubt it.

Topics: , , , , | 4 Comments »

More Secure

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

stei090514

They say the gods punish you by granting your wishes. Now I’m really regretting all that time I wished that Dick Cheney were not so secretive. For eight years we could barely get him to talk; now he’s popping up everywhere, doing his best to undermine the new administration. Let’s have a show of hands. Who misses the old Cheney, hiding out in his secure, undisclosed location?

Topics: , , , | 2 Comments »