“Be armed, or don’t be around me!”
Patton (paraphrased)
Here is something we can do right now!
Our Secretary of Defense yesterday reluctantly, embarrassingly acknowledged a firm al-Qaeda connection to the Saudi “student” who murdered three US sailors in Pensacola, FL last December.
Ever since, DOJ and Apple have been at odds over 4th Amendment issues surrounding encryption of the perpetrator’s cell-phone data.
Meanwhile, we’re told DOD “will take further prudent (unspecified) measures to safeguard our people.”
Well, those three dead sailors apparently didn’t get to enjoy “measures” that were in place at the time, did they?
While we’re wringing our hands over 4th Amendment issues, and ostensibly implementing all these “prudent measures” (which were apparently not “prudent” enough to have been in-place last December), here is something a courageous Secretary of Defense could do right now in order to directly and comprehensively address these monotonous security failures:
Immediately declare that all officers and enlisted servicemen, at E6 and above, shall bear issued sidearms (the safe and effective use of which we’re assured they’ve been thoroughly trained), on and off-watch, as per official Pentagon Policy?
UDs?
Maybe.
But, at thousands of domestic PDs and SOs, staffed around-the-clock with continuously-armed men and women, we have an occasional UD, but not so much so that anyone seriously suggests the absurd ecumenical disarmament currently enforced at every military base in the nation, and most off-shore, even in areas of active hostile contact!
But of course, diffident bureaucrats (in and out of uniform) fear career-ending “incidents” far more than they fear for the lives of their men.
For one, I’m far more fearful of “dangerous ignorance” than I am of “dangerous knowledge!”
And, I’m equally fearful of “dangerous vulnerability,” far more than I am of “dangerous freedom!”
“Maintain a constant state of alert
Do not walk alone
Weapons are to be kept on your person, and ready for immediate use, at all times”
Wehrmacht Directive, Eastern Front, July 1941
/John