Why Liberals Cannot Be Trusted With National Security

by Gregory D. Lee

In the October 25, 2008 edition of the Standard-Times, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) provided some insights as to what we can expect if he and his fellow liberals win both houses of Congress and Sen. Barack Obama becomes president.

According to the article, he called for a 25% cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs. “The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner,” he said. Then he added, “We don’t need all these fancy weapons.”

Does cutting defense 25% while engaged in two wars make any sense? It does to liberals.

Despite the fact that most of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were in this country illegally, and many possessed multiple genuine driver licenses, liberals continue to push legislation to grant licenses to illegal aliens. Sen. Obama is in favor of illegals obtaining drivers licenses.

Sen. Obama proudly reminds voters at every opportunity that he was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. John Edwards said his vote was a mistake. If the overwhelming intelligence available at the time couldn’t convince Sen. Obama that Saddam Hussein was a threat that had to be stopped, I’m afraid nothing would have convinced him to go to war to protect this country. If someone showed Obama a photograph of Bill Clinton or John Edwards passionately kissing his wife, would he say there wasn’t enough evidence to question her about it?

Stanfield Turner almost single-handedly dismantled the CIA when he was Jimmy Carter’s liberal director, but he did succeed in destroying the morale among the ranks of intelligence case officers with loony ideas like only using persons with clean records as informants to gather intelligence. Please show me an informant for the CIA who doesn’t have baggage like drug dealing or human rights violations. These people possess valuable information only insiders like them have and they are willing to trade it for something valuable. The idea of only using priests and rabbis as intelligence gatherers is a very bad idea. Yet it was hailed by liberals as a necessary reform at the CIA.

Liberals are also the ones who built the “wall” within the FBI’s criminal and foreign intelligence divisions and between the FBI and the CIA so they could not share information about terrorists operating in the U.S. Then liberal members of Congress had the gall to appoint Jaime S. Gorelick to the 9/11 Commission. Gorelick, as an underling to former Attorney General Janet Reno, actually wrote the Department of Justice policy that erected the wall! The commissioners didn’t have to go far to find out who was partially to blame for the tragedy. All they had to do was turn their chairs to the far Left and there she was.

Despite liberals’ dismal track record on national defense policy, they claim to be every bit as patriotic and concerned about national security as conservatives. Even if you gave them the benefit of the doubt about their patriotism, they cannot point to a single policy or achievement since the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki that has enhanced national security. Advocating a nuclear freeze during the Cold War when it was needed most, defunding anti-Communist guerrillas in Central America, voting against a missile defense shield, leaving town for a recess instead of voting on an important terrorism wiretap bill that was about to expire, and not allowing off-shore drilling for oil, readily come to mind as other examples of the weakening, not strengthening, of national security.

Democrat vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden said to mark his words that a President Obama would be tested with a foreign policy crisis within the first six months of his presidency. I think he may be right, given Sen. Obama’s liberalism and lack of any meaningful experience. Putting liberals in charge of this nation’s security is a fool’s bet. In this dangerous era of Islamofacism and Russian reemergence, a liberal in charge of our national security is a nightmare that might come true this election.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the American people will come to their senses and elect Sen. John McCain by a two-to-five point margin. We don’t have long to find out if I’m right.