National Security Advice From a Civil Servant

My hometown Washington Post has a superb profile of Rand Beers, who recently quit the inner circle of Bush’s national security team to work for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Some of the quotes are devastating:

Within U.S. borders, homeland security is suffering from “policy constipation. Nothing gets done,” Beers said. “Fixing an agency management problem doesn’t make headlines or produce voter support. So if you’re looking at things from a political perspective, it’s easier to go to war.”

and…

Part of that stemmed from his frustration with the culture of the White House. He was loath to discuss it. His wife, Bonnie, a school administrator, was not: “It’s a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There’s almost a religious kind of certainty. There’s no curiosity about opposing points of view. It’s very scary. There’s kind of a ghost agenda.”

The things this gentleman has to say, and the broader implications of his actions, are incredibly important. Our present national security initiatives are a farce, and the common complaint that they trample on civil liberties pales in importance to the fact that these initiatives simply are not making things more secure. That Mr. Beers would choose to work for John Kerry is the first thing that has motivated me to take a closer look at his campaign. But that Beers has now dedicated himself to getting Bush out of office signals that, more pressing than the plethora of vapid complaints about our current President, is the reality that the decisions Bush and his administration are making for America are leading us down precisely the road he danes to repave. If you’ve got a neuron firing, take note.