-By Frank Salvato
Just when you thought the disingenuous blathering of the elected class, which typically affords the American people a huge helping of inaction and poor governance, was as bad as it could get, something comes along that makes their political opportunism seem almost acceptable. This time the dysfunctional behavior is between law enforcement agencies and because of it our national security hangs in the balance.
A new report by the Inspectors General of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice spotlights a dysfunctional relationship between agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It seems that ICE doesn’t like working with the FBI on cases involving terrorist financing. The report alluded to the fact that there were a few reasons why ICE had its nose out of joint with the FBI, but the one reason that made my jaw drop was that ICE agents felt slighted where acknowledgment regarding successful cases was concerned.
Unbelievable.
How pathetic is it that agents from two of our chief law enforcement agencies – during a time of war – would be more concerned with who gets credit for successfully executing their jobs than actually doing the jobs to the best of their abilities?
All federal law enforcement agents – as well as most law enforcement officers in the
United States (most firefighters as well) – swear an oath:
“I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”
These agents, by swearing this oath, put duty above vanity. They accept the mission of serving and protecting the citizens of the United States while safeguarding its citizenry from enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Today, these agents are on the front lines of a conflict that sees our very existence hanging in the balance. They are responsible for defending our country from the clandestine and criminal operations of an enemy hell-bent on eradicating the American way of life – literally. Yet, in the face of this very real danger, a danger whose threat may very well eclipse that of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the security of our nation and the safety of the American people have been compromised by egos.
I, for one, have had it with the self-centered, the lazy and the purposefully ignorant. I am angry with the appeasers, the deniers and the America-haters. I am tired of being placed into harms way by the ideologically lazy and the conceptually dysfunctional. I am tired of having to explain what should be considered common sense and pointing out what should be common knowledge and having to do so in the Internet age, when information is just a mouse click away.
Our nation, our culture, is facing perhaps the quintessential struggle of our time, a legitimate battle for our survival. We are facing an enemy – and it is an enemy – that wants to bring our nation and the whole of Western Civilization to an end. This enemy is not a misunderstood religious sect or a faction of oppressed people lashing out because of something we, as a culture, have done to them. They are an aggressive, fascist sect who hates us and everything we stand for, going all the way back to the Founders and the Framers. We are at war and, quite frankly, we did an incredible disservice to the free world when we failed to secure an accurately defined and binding Declaration of War after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
It is outrageous that we have tolerated, to date, the spittle-infused ranting of the useful idiots of the American Fifth Column. It is criminal that our government has not prosecuted, for acts of treason, those individuals and organizations – both of the media and the civil rights variety – who seek to give unfathomable advantages (i.e. leaking classified information to the press, hampering intelligence gathering and facilitating the defeat of our troops on the battlefield) to those who want to kill us. These short-sighted, maladjusted, narcissists contribute nothing to the advancement of true freedom and liberty, here or around the world, and but for providing the perfect example of how to destroy a republican form of democracy, their contempt for these principles stands as testimony to their uselessness.
It is equally, if not more outrageous that law enforcement agents are engaged in a battle of egos, a battle for territorial recognition, while ignoring directives (orders), violating their oaths and abandoning their countrymen because they weren’t given a gold star for doing the job they signed-on to do.
It is well past time that we, the average American, demand more from our government and our fellow Americans. We must take back our country from the influence of the American Fifth Column, the fringe elements of our society. We, the silent majority, must shake off the apathy that has rendered ineffective our constitutionally mandated duty to civic responsibility and we must do it now, before it is too late.
It is our duty to educate ourselves on the facts, to discard the propaganda of the deceitful and to condemn those who disseminate false information – or “spun” rhetoric. We must attack those political opportunists who will say anything to attain power. We must expose the American Fifth Column for the minority anti-freedom, anti-sovereignty, special interest faction that they are. We must eradicate from our government opportunistic “professional” politicians and, at the same time, demand that those who enlist to serve and protect our nation do so selflessly and diligently.
To do this, we, the majority in our great nation, have to lead by example and that means giving of ourselves, sacrificing time and treasure and supporting those who are fighting the good fight, whether it be on the front lines of the Iraqi battlefields or the informational battlefields of cyberspace and the media. Bottom line, if you aren’t doing anything to help, you aren’t doing anything.
As for the ICE and FBI agents who are having problems getting along and doing their jobs, if you can’t get over your bloated egos long enough to be faithful to our nation then quit. There are men and women – better men and women – who love our country enough to do the job without getting a “gold star.” Just ask any Gold Star Mother.
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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us