Bureaucracy Run Amuck – Exposing the Stupidity

by Jack Lee

Probably the greatest single achievement any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve is to drain the life blood of a nation’s economy in such a way that it compromises not only government revenues and resources but it dramatically affects the way individuals go about their daily lives.

If there was an achievement award for terrorism then the prize of the century must go to Osama bin Laden’s and his Al Qaeda terrorist network and their one successful attack on 9/11/2001. This simple, low budget, easy-to-carry out attack just keeps on giving, or from the perspective of us victims, its a gift that keeps on taking from us. Government has made sure of that because they have made no end of stupid moves since then – all in the name of national security of course!

We’re a bureaucratic oriented superpower and that means we will always have a penchant for expanding government and its role in our daily lives and brother did 9/11 provide a great opening to do that! And to make matters worse, our dear leaders have done it in the most costly and ineffective ways imaginable, it’s been a series of blunders. We’re prone to be reactive not proactive, that’s just the way this system works because of so many people involved in the decision making. For example right after Pearl Harbor we found a thousand ways it could have been prevented and the same goes for 9/11. We great at closing barn doors afer the horses are out. Well, we analized 9/11 adnausium and sure enough we dropped the ball not once, but many times and it ended badly. It was easily preventable event just like Pearl Harbor and the blame rests on the actions or inactions of a few low level government employees.

Our leaders will do whatever they do for security with a certain amount of indifference or disconnect to the will (or wishes) of the every day citizen. (Surely you have noticed?) But, because we have such vast resources we can squander on boondoggles with little immediate discomfort or even much notice. If a lesser nation would do the same it would mean their immediate economic collapse, but for us it’s been, so far, to merely be the pooring of future generations. Although right now that pooring is starting to touch the current generation and our economic future has never been more uncertain. And its due in large part to one madman named Osama and all the useful fools in our government that have been spending our wealth in foolish ways under the guise of security.

Homeland Security was the greatest end product of Osama bin Laden’s scheme and even he could not have foreseen such a valuable payoff to his plot. He was just trying to influence American foreign policy and he got another federal bureaucracy able to squander hundreds of billions and weaken the nation for decades! The actual damages bin Laden caused on 9/11 pale compared to what we’ve done to ourselves since then. We’ve pumped in hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent another 9/11, yet in all the years since there’s never been more than a few isolated attempts by lone individuals carrying bombs that didn’t work.

Remember how Janet Napolitano was so quick to take credit for the Homeland network that she claimed led to the capture of the Christmas underwear bomber? This is what bureaucrats do to protect their bureaucracy. She lied – but wasn’t fired, was she? Nah…she got a pass. Bureaucracy is the safe haven for liars, cheats and incompetents. In reality this particular attack was only prevented thanks a failed device and to passengers on the plane who intervened. Homeland failed us! It utterly and completely failed us. There whole purpose for being was to enable the sharing of intelligence information between various internal security agencies here and abroad. It didn’t happen and once again the intelligence information was available and could have stopped an attack, but the responsible agencies dropped the ball and it was a colossal failure to communicate, just like we had in 9/11. Homeland didn’t score anything – it was just exactly the opposite.

The problem with grandiose security systems are they often come down to an individual’s judgment call and if that individual is typical of most long term federal employees plodding along in our bureaucracy maze the odds favor the ball being dropped – not passed.

In a nation like ours we have thousands of miles of border that is wide open. Even our most well guarded Southern border still sees the back and forth ebb and flow of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and smugglers every year. They are not well educated or particularly bright people either, they are often just farm workers who sneak in. If they can defeat the worlds greatest superpower’s attempts at a secure border what does that tell you about the hundreds of thousands of other points of entry with a fraction of security employed on the southern border? And what about our airport security with all the new inconveniences we are forced to endure are we really safe now? The answer is an obvious no.

Despite all the new airport precautions it didn’t stop the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, only fate intervened on our behalf, that and a few brave passengers. We didn’t even have an air marshal involved in either event. We still don’t profile for terrorists -we do this political correct random search business.

Like it or not, we’re a wide open country and because we are we could spend our entire national wealth trying to make us secure against another 9/11 attack and never even come close to that goal. Yet, it does not stop the bureaucrats from trying does it? Since 9/11, tens of billions of dollars have been spent to upgrade airport security, yet all of it still was not enough to prevent the bombing attempt on Christmas Day. We’ve spent over $42bn on airport security that doesn’t work, but it does serve the goal of terrorism, how crazy is that? After all we’ve done screeners say over 50% of the cargo in passenger planes still can’t be immediately checked against a single terrorist watch list.

I’ve talked to many people, civilians, military, even security specialists and nobody I’ve met was ever clamoring for a new federal security agency or even more airport security. Nobody I’ve met was afraid of another terrorist attack, but our government tells us we are and how another attack would just send the nations citizens into a panic from which we might never recover. Businesses would stop, planes would be grounded, fear would have us begging for mercy…or so the bureaucrats in Washington would have us believe.

There is a secret government that is now growing beyond our control:

Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

It’s time to stop the insanity done in our name with our money. We don’t want it and more importantly we don’t need it. We know the risks that come with freedom, we’ve always known and we’ve done alright. We’re a strong people and we seem to have more courage and common sense than those who represent us in Washington!

What we need to do is, tell the bureaucrats they do not run this nation, we do! They do our bidding – we do not do theirs!

If we wanted a gigantic Homeland Security Agency we would have demanded it – we didn’t. If we wanted American citizens, including military personnel, police officers, pilots, young children and the elderly pat searched and shoes removed or body scanned and wanded we would have demanded it – we didn’t.

The bureaucrats told us it was necessary for our protection. Now we’re telling them, we think you’re a bunch of idiots. What in the world are you doing wanding and patting down the airline pilots? What possible justification could there be for that one? They are flying the weapon! When has a 2 year old worn a suicide vest? What little old lady from Connecticut has ever thrown in with Al Qeada? You would search American service personnel in full uniform returning from fighting a war on our behalf and then search them for weapons? You people making these rules are nuts. You are absolutely freaking nuts.

Right after 9/11 Israel our only true friend in the Middle East and the only democracy there offered to help us with our airport and border security. Our bureaucrats acted just like our bureaucrats did at the outbreak of World War II when the highly experience British offered to show us how to use convoys to protect against U-boat attacks…it was, no thanks, we know best. Only we didn’t know best and President Truman would later to say, “We would have saved a lot of ships and lives if we had entered the war by shooting the Secretary of the Navy first.” I think the same thing can be said of today’s bureaucrats who are spending our dwindling resources on those idiotic, but politically correct security measures at our airports and on bigger and more intrusive government, like Homeland Security. Even if you still think Homeland was a great idea, what chance does it have for working with ninnies like Janet Napolitano at the helm? She knows about as much about terrorism and national security as my cat. .