Letters from Readers
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
August 30, 2009
American security increasingly depends on foreigners
Re: "How 'Buy America' is bad for national security," Aug. 17
James Jay Carafano muddies, rather than clarifies, the nature of major challenges facing America's defense manufacturing base.
He justifies his case against "Buy American" provisions by claiming that foreign companies scarcely win any Pentagon contracts.
Yet reports containing this data ignore the critical question of how American-made the products bought by DoD actually are. If they resemble advanced manufactures in general - as indicated by the increasingly blurry line between civilian and defense goods - levels of foreign content are already worrisomely high.
So, therefore, is U.S. reliance on overseas suppliers. Worse, China -- hardly one of the "trusted and dependable allies" Carafano emphasizes - dominates U.S. and global markets for critical electronics parts and components.
Carafano also erroneously implies that "Buy American" regulations originated in the Obama era, but such laws have governed defense procurement since 1950. Since then, however, complacent American politicians have never seriously monitored or enforced them, and blinkered, penny-pinching Defense officials have gone outsourcing happy. As a result, U.S. national security today depends on the kindness of strangers to a degree that would have alarmed U.S. leaders from the Founding Fathers to the heroes of the Cold War.
Alan Tonelson
Research fellow,
U.S. Business and Industry Council
Slothful bureaucracy fails to protect the public
Re: "Abolish the DHS," Aug. 25
Gene Healy was right to criticize the bloated bureaucracy that is the Department of Homeland Security. Its worst feature is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which fails to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs.
A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA's failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.
In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago's O'Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of lazy employees.
Hans Bader
Arlington
Few random phone callers don't speak for all
Re: "Memo to the whining Left," Aug 10
Gregory Kane castigates what he terms "the whining Left's" complaints about Sen. Tom Coburn's use of Desi Arnaz's catch phrase ("You have some 'splaining to do!") in an exchange with then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over the Second Amendment.
On the basis of an indeterminate number of phone calls received while he appeared on a Baltimore college radio station, Kane wildly extrapolates that left-wingers en masse are apoplectic over Coburn's dated allusion. This is nonsense. A few phone calls cannot logically be said to represent the mindset of an entire group.
It would seem that Kane has "some 'splaining to do" himself.
Craig Taylor
Alexandria
Obama's appeal to religious leaders falls flat
Re: "White House stirs hornets' nest with use of religion on health plan," Aug. 21
Julie Mason quotes President Obama on his efforts to enlist the support of religious leaders for his heath care agenda: "I am my brother's keeper."
Think about that for a moment. Do you really want someone who does not believe in the right to life to be your keeper?
Susan S. Jones
Baltimore
