In Defense of Obama and the TSA

Published in The Catalyst 

Having lived in Manhattan during the September 11^th attacks- seeing smoke rise from where the Twin Towers once stood, reading thousands of missing posters on every surface of the city and cheering in the streets for the FDNY and NYPD workers who fought so hard to rescue strangers- I know first hand what terrorism looks like. I may have been young, not even knowing what it was at the time, but I knew for the first time in my life that there were people out there willing to die in the name of dead Americans. It is for this reason alone that I’m more than willing to sacrifice some discomfort at the airport to thwart us from losing more lives at here at home.

It is tremendously blurry in my view how sacrificing lives in the Middle East is keeping us safer at home. I tend to feel like the massive and seemingly endless War in Afghanistan is only increasing discontent overseas and thus heightening our risk of a terrorist attack at home. Many European countries, such as Germany, are now weighing their involvement in the war as threats at home mount. Weather or not what we are we are giving up over there is worth the money and lives, there is no question we can give up something at home to keep our nation safe.

While I wont go as far as to say those who conscientiously object to the intrusive TSA pat-downs and strip searches are unpatriotic, I have no problem calling many of them selfish. People simply put their own comfort above the safety of our country.

I completely recognize the immoral nature of forcing a father to take the clothes off his 7-year old son so TSA employees can make sure he doesn’t have a bomb on him right there in the public view at Salt Lake City’s international airport. But, I would advocate in response to exceptional cases like this one for more privacy and better conduct at the airports, not the elimination of important security protocols. The boy should have been taken to a back room with his dad present- a back room where nobody would have filmed the event with intentions of making a YouTube hit. I believe we can continue to enhance security while still maintaining the vital civil liberty of privacy.

 As the press continues to cover the TSA with an unrelenting microscope, I find the attention-seeking outcry of conservatives labeling the Obama administrations allowance of heightened security to be incredibly overblown and hypocritical. They are willing to sign up men and women to die overseas in the name of national security, but suddenly when a Democrat’s White House tries to ensure national security at the airports, its criminally unconstitutional? In their eagerness to pin every ounce of public dissatisfaction in America on President Obama, the Republican Party is attempting to identify the security procedures as big government chewing on our rights. Suddenly siding with the ALCU, Mike Huckabee, for instance, has taken on a rather unspoken voice on the topic, calling pat-downs “ a humiliating and degrading, totally unconstitutional intrusion”. It’s funny hearing him say this, for less than 5 years ago, he defended the Patriot Act under George Bush, saying we needed to “use everything at the president’s disposal to keep us safe” while voting against Topic 14- the liberal bill that targeted the law for harming civil liberties. Convenient that safety at the disposal of a Democrat is unconstitutional but a Republican’s warentless wiretapping procedures are just fine.

The politicizing of the airport security issue is yet another near-flawless example politicians addiction to partisanship.  I find it disgusting that national security is being mishandled to take a populist stance against the president. I’m not a big fan of Obama’s disappointing time in power, but I’m not fishing for put-downs either. It’s time we came together on something, and I ask, what better to come together around during the holiday travel season when we are all trying our best to be together, than our safety?