Keeping Us Safe

I'm about sick -- sick and tired -- of hearing the Republicans and other naysayers constantly griping about President Obama "not keeping us safe." We're safe. As safe as we've ever been.

But it starts at the top (it'd be the bottom if scum didn't rise) with a guy like Dick Cheney, who's continually prattling on about this. Never mind that Mr. Obama has continued many of the same programs, and that he's actually intensified some, that he's killing one terrorist after another (which the Republicans are also complaining about), and catching Taliban leaders regularly.

The short story is we're as safe as we've ever been, keeping in mind that the possibilities are virtually infinite as to what any potential enemy could do.

Just because we're safe, though, doesn't mean we're safe, for exactly that reason. You can't guard against every nut with a gun or plane. And even if you could, that wouldn't prevent someone with poison, a knife, or a wet noodle from coming out of nowhere to do something. How could we prevent every bad thing? Would we put a monitor out there trailing every single person? Then who's going to monitor the monitors? Because one of them could turn out to be a nut like the guy with the plane the other day in Austin. Or the soldier at Fort Hood.

To be 100% safe is impossible. Life carries with it all kinds of risk. And the fact that people are sometimes very evil, crazy, unstable, and dangerous is not a fact that's going away soon.

Everyone ought to sit back and be patriotic about it. The commander in chief is not a person who can circumvent the laws of life. We ought to support one another's efforts to maintain civic harmony and be vigilant against threats, not always just looking for some way to exploit every whipstitch for partisan gain. We ought to get back to the idea that we're all in this together, looking out for the common good.