McCain Policy: Homeland Security

2008 Presidential Candidate Platform Discussion

Senator John McCain believes that the highest priority for any President is protecting the lives of American citizens, defending their personal freedom, and securing our land and resources. John McCain has the experience to insure that this priority is put into practice by the hundreds of thousands of dedicated men and women who serve their country in homeland security positions every day.

www.johnmccain.com...


Presented for critical discussion and analysis by ATS members under the spirit of the new guidelines announced in This Thread.

Homeland security is easy, make friends, dont lie, cheat or steal..respect and be civil. Be on defensive readyness, but never provoke. And let only trustworthy and able home born people say and influence things so that the world emulates such integrity, seeing as everyones a follwer and not a doer.

stop watching football and make something for the future to be better, no not big screens with slushy machines attached, ok maybe later..

homeland security imo is a joke . american terror cells still operate, war on drugs is lost partly because of homeland security, and police are somewhat powerless in areas of the U.S. even where there is an established presence in an area.

It needs a reform or an overhaul to make sure that what homeland security is supposed to be doing that it should be doing, which it obviously is doing a very poor job of.They give poor shmucks the boot who are just visiting or buying stuff across the border while they let murderers through from both sides of the border who are running from the law.

It will only get worse , and i can see something very drastic going to happen in the U.S concerning policys in the Homeland Security and National Security.

Thanks ATS Info -- a few of my reactions, upon reading McCain's positions:

The United States must use all of the instruments at our disposal to counter the short and long-term threats posed by international terrorism.

The United States has nuclear and biological weapons at our disposal. Must we use those? I would like to have heard an 'appropriate' or 'necessary' inserted into that policy statement. To omit such paints the 'short and long-term threats' as being above all reasonable or rational approach to solution.

One glaring example of this is Congress’ failure to heed the call to significantly streamline Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security

I would like to see this extended to the Intelligence Community, as a whole. Also, there is a conflict of interest between covert and secret intelligence actions, and oversight by a public body. Is there a solution to that? I would like to hear discussion that doesn't pretend that past abuses such as Iran-Contra, The Church Commission, etc, etc, never occurred.

he will work with the private sector and an informed citizenry to safeguard our security. Public-private partnerships are an essential part of the entire homeland security effort – from planning to implementation and operations.

I am very wary of the private sector, and public-private partnership, in providing 'solutions' -- "from planning to implementation and operations". I see no compelling evidence that the motivation of the private sector for-profit entities would be to reduce and minimize such occurrences, rather the opposite: the profit-motive would encourage active and expensive involvement.

a McCain Administration will find and disrupt terrorist organizations and their financing and ensure that weapons of mass destruction do not fall into terrorists’ hands.

Yes, 'active' foreign policy seems necessary in this day and age. I would like to hear more about efforts to establish international consensus on the 'threats' of WMD, and exact, agreed definitions of who 'should' have them and who shouldn't. What about the NPT? It seems to me that much Anti-American sentiment is caused by perceived unilateral judgements by the United States, regarding who could be a 'threat' and who can be 'trusted' with various weapons and capabilities.

John McCain strongly supported modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide in statute clear guidance for future actions that may need to be taken... John McCain never believed that we should punish telecommunications companies that acted in good faith in response to requests for assistance from the nation’s senior national security advisors.

I believe the blocking of FISA-related court cases (the telecom 'amnesty' bill) actually obscured the 'clear guidance' McCain desires. This goes back to the issue of reliable oversight of the legality and appropriateness of the actions of the Intelligence Community as a whole, and should not be a separate issue.

Paramount in this area is the need to obtain the international consensus for strict sanctions that would prevent Iran from obtaining the material and know-how necessary for developing nuclear weapons.

I am glad to hear the emphasis on the need for international consensus here. Given the strongly uncompromising stance of the rest of the statement, however, I am concerned that this will once-again be perceived as 'American bullying', and further inflame international tensions.

For example, UPS, FedEx, and Wal-Mart can tell in real time where a package is anywhere in the world.... And federal law should provide sufficient liability protections to encourage companies to act as a ‘force multiplier’ for the government during disaster response and recovery efforts.

As an ATS reader, I am immediately suspicious of blanket 'liability protection', as I know they can be used to cover-up investigation of possibly-objectionable behavior. For example, FedEx's standard terms-of-service already provide them liability protection, for example with lost or damaged packages, etc. What is the need for carte-blanche?

The network, which would be created by licensing an additional 30 MHz of radio spectrum in the upper 700 MHz band to a Public Safety Broadband Trust, would provide first responders seamless nationwide roaming capability and allow for the real time transmission of data.

In the context of emergency disaster response, this sounds reasonable. I do not want a panopticon, however, where a government-controlled 'broadband network' constantly monitors and transmits data nationwide, searching for possible 'threats'. What is a 'first responder', exactly, in definition? Will there be no need to ever ask for 'papers, please', because every cop-on-the-corner will already know who you are, where you've been, and what your government-assigned 'threat level' is? Scary.

additional zero-emission nuclear energy plants

I would like to hear more about adapting military-developed nuclear technology to public use. I believe the current nuclear plants in operation are based on 40-year-old design and technology? I would really like to hear more about safe nuclear power, nuclear waste disposal, and methods for developing new energy-generating technologies. I know 'nuclear' is a hot-button word, but I believe it is the most obviously practical solution for avoiding fossil fuel dependence.

John McCain is more concerned with protecting the American people from future terrorist attacks, by killing or bringing to justice those who commit them, than he is with giving terrorists rights that would allow a judge to set them free before they are tried.

Let's be clear -- no government entity can 'give rights'. People either have them, or they don't. And if you don't trust judges to not 'set all the terrorist free' and destroy America, isn't that a hugely significant issue? McCain needs to either talk more about the judicial balance of power between the executive and the non-military court system, or he need to drop such one-sided rhetoric.