Politicizing National Security

Interesting food for thought. The bold and italics are mine.

Politicizing National Security
by: John Morgan Wed Dec 30, 2009

While the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner was unsuccessful Republicans are attempting to make political hay of the incident. We know we have massive holes in our national security defense, we know this because George W. Bush refused to finance our homeland defense. Instead he insisted on an "offense only" approach. Ports, chemical plants and borders were ignored in favor of "taking it to the enemy." Now the GOP is trying to blame Barack Obama for Bush's strategy. Not only that but they are holding up TSA for political purposes.

I suppose this all goes back to Rush's strategy of making Obama fail so Republicans can blame Democrats for their own failures. By having someone like Sen. Jim DeMint block the appointment of someone to run TSA because he thinks allowing workers to stand up for themselves is worse than leaving the country vulnerable to attack they can then blame President Obama for not having someone at the helm. It's the classic "have your cake and eat it too" mentality. Republicans can vote against funding and installation of chemical scanning machines (108 of them voted against it) then blame Obama for not having enough of them. Of course they had eight years to fund and install these but invading a country which posed no strategic national security threat to us was more important.

Let us remember this flight originated in Amsterdam. Barack Obama has no control over what the Dutch do, what security measures they use, or what any other country does at their airports. These are all sovereign nations which resent us trying to tell them what to do. We can only control what we do and we failed miserably in this area. I've written repeatedly of the negligence given to our homeland security since 9/11. We simply haven't spent the money to upgrade in critical areas and what was spent was spent badly. Much of it went for pork. Much went where it wasn't needed.

Making political hay because of one's own negligence is worse than being disingenuous, it is outright fraud. I'm past the point where I think Republicans have no shame, they have no sense of anyone but themselves. As such they have no one but themselves to blame.

Sam Stein reports that eight GOP Senators voted against funding for airport screening and explosive detection equipment:
The Improving America's Security Act of 2007 was a relatively non-controversial measure that effectively implemented several un-acted-upon recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Eighty-five Senators voted in favor of the bill's passage. Seven missed the vote (several of whom were on the campaign trail, including Barack Obama, John McCain and Chris Dodd).
Eight Republican Senators, however, voted against passage, including Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), James Inhofe (R-Okl.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ari.).

DeMint, of course, is the same Senator who chose to oppose unions more than terrorists.

Crush du Jour: Jason Whipple