Just As I Thought

The horses come home

I don’t really want to bloviate today, so I’ll let others do it for me in a far more comprehensive and intelligent way.
But let me say this first: raising security on transit after an attack is pretty damned useless, isn’t it? Why does our security strategy seem to be akin to closing the gate after the horses come home? For example, as far as I can tell the sole change on Metro in DC to twart bombers was the removal of trash cans. How does that stop someone from taking a bomb on board in a backpack? I don’t know how that kind of thing would be detected and stopped, but why waste time and money on cosmetic solutions?
I don’t pretend that I have the answers. I have no freakin’ clue. But I know that the two extremes in this situation — on one side, the solution is to wage unending war with countless lives taken and a continuing hatred of America by Muslims as well as other nations, the other side would have us placate Arab extremists or try to “understand” them in the name of religious tolerance — will never work. The nutcases who become terrorists are not about to listen to reason, they won’t stop because of overwhelming force nor will they stop because we give in to their demands. They are barbaric, inhuman, and clearly insane — that’s sometimes the very definition of fanatical.
So, why is our president continually spewing the same rhetoric about Iraq, his new excuse for which is to “fight the terrorists there instead of in our own streets.” How is fighting there going to stop extremists here — or in London?
Here’s what David Sirota has to say.

…the fact that this line of reasoning insults our intelligence shouldn’t be the biggest concern with it. The fact that this rationale has justified spending billions on a war in Iraq while shortchanging basic homeland security is what’s really troubling. For years now, experts have begged the Bush administration to adequately fund key homeland security priorities – but they have been rejected at almost every turn.

Instea, the White House has knowingly left our ports, our borders and yes – our transit systems – totally vulnerable to terrorist attacks because they have refused to spend adequate resources, even as they have insisted on cutting taxes for the wealthy and plunging us into a war in Iraq. When Democrats have tried to reduce those tax cuts to pay for critical homeland security needs, they have been voted down. Meanwhile, GOP leaders in Congress have gone along: for instance, just a few weeks ago they gutted funding for transit security.

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