Failing Security
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how our current government in the United States has bent over backwards to appease the world’s bullies, like Russia, rather than standing up for what is right. In that post, I mentioned the provocative and dangerous Russian act of aggression against a United States Navy warship, the guided missile destroyer Donald Cook. Putin had one of his fighters repeatedly buzz the warship, threatening the crew with the potential for violence. In the blog post two weeks ago, I was concerned with addressing President Obama’s lack of response to Putin’s flagrant saber rattling. However, there is another extremely fundamental concern with this event: Why was the fighter allowed to penetrate the Donald Cook’s security perimeter in the first place?
Our military assets are an extension of our country, and are supposed to be cared for and protected in the same way as we protect our country. Typically, a ship as valuable as the Donald Cook would maintain a security perimeter to protect it from any potential harm. However, in this case, our Commander-in-Chief put this warship in a position where it was vulnerable to a hostile aircraft. At any time, this fighter could have significantly damaged our ship, putting nearly 300 American lives on the Donald Cook in extreme danger. This current administration has allowed our nation’s security to become extremely lax, risking the lives of our military personnel around the world and leaving America open to attack at home.
President Obama is clearly missing some vital qualifications that are necessary to be an effective Commander-in-Chief, but he is not alone in this. Most of the politicians in Washington over the last several decades have been (at best) incompetent when it comes to managing our national security. 55% of Senators and 36% of Representatives were practicing law before being elected to public service, and Obama, Clinton, Ford, and Nixon were all attorneys. These people do not have the training or the background to understand the nuances or importance of security, and the training they do have makes them particularly poorly suited for making important security decisions.
The education and training that these politicians received in Law School was of a very specific kind – they were taught to exploit loopholes in grammar in order to get ahead. They were taught that there is no right and wrong, only what they can and cannot get away with. And, most damagingly, they were taught that the most important thing in the world is making money, to the point that it is acceptable to neglect other things of moral and patriotic value. That is why President Obama and our Congress see no problem with leaving our military personnel in dangerous situations with no support, and why they are happy to continuously throw money to their friends on Wall Street while cutting funding to our military, leaving our veterans without the resources they need.
At times in the past, I have needed attorneys to write contracts for me. I needed to write all the technical aspects of the contract, while the attorneys just went through to add the whys and wherefores to make it legal. Having the legal knowledge that is necessary to frame a law or a policy does not mean that they have the knowledge to fill in the important details. Attorneys are responsible for nearly all of the problems facing our country today. Why do we think electing more of them will solve our problems?
Our nation’s security is too important to leave up to a bunch of attorneys. We need leaders with a more diverse skill set, people who are used to rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work that keeps this country running. If you agree that we need real leaders with real skills leading this country, than I urge you to vote for me, Art Drew, in the 2016 Presidential election.