Old military truism: The bad stuff settles at the bottom. I wasn’t in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for three days when I heard that. It came from S.Sgt. Wallace Tidwell, my military training instructor, who was a Tennessee good ‘ol boy.
Tidwell, who stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and was as wide as a Sherman tank, didn’t use the term “bad stuff.” He chose a word that was a bit more scatological in nature.
That was the military; now that I’m a journalist, the truism has changed. The “bad stuff” doesn’t settle at the bottom. It kind of rises to the top.
That means when bad stuff happens, it’s those in charge, not those at the bottom, who need to be held accountable.
So whose heads should roll at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Department of Justice over the “Fast and Furious” fiasco?
Here’s a brief explanation of Fast and Furious: according to various news reports, the ATF — still known by those initials in spite of the expanded name — transferred more than 2,000 AK-47s, AR-15s, .50-caliber sniper rifles and other assorted firepower to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel. The justification?
ATF agents were supposed to track the weapons, the better to arrest leaders of the cartel. (Why did I get the urge to go “wink, wink” after reading that reasoning?)
Of course, it didn’t happen that way, because these things seldom do. Instead, the weapons have subsequently turned up at hundreds of crime scenes, mostly in Mexico but also in the Arizona desert where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed in a firefight with drug cartelists.
The first heads to roll would be those on the shoulders of any ATF official who thought “Fast and Furious” was a good idea.
Those people, of course, aren’t at the top. The ATF is part of the Department of Justice. And who sits at the top of the DOJ?
Why, our old friend, Attorney General Eric Holder himself.
Remember Holder as the guy who chided Americans for not wanting to honestly deal with the issue of race? My dear Mr. Holder, how’s this for honesty: If you were a white guy, the broadcast and print media would have called for you scalp on this one.
And they’d have gotten it, too.
As it is, the press has given Holder the same kid glove treatment it gave his boss, President Obama, during the 2008 presidential race.
They’ve completely bought Holder’s first, last and only defense he’s given about the “Fast and Furious” snafu.
He didn’t know about it, Holder claimed.
Well, he could be lying, in which case Holder should resign. Or he could be telling the truth, and the more skeptical among us might wonder if his attention span was diverted from having to give Americans all those lectures about how we aren’t honest enough to talk about race.
In which case, he should still resign.
I’m already on record as advocating that Holder be impeached, for his flagrantly uneven approach to illegal immigration.
He hauled Arizona and Alabama into court for passing laws that don’t violate federal immigration law, and has yet to do so with Maryland, which has a law that violates it.
Lately Holder whined that Republicans were guilty of “political posturing” for implying he’d been less than candid about what and when he knew about “F&F.” But I’ve got some real political posturing for Holder, and I’ve got it in rhyme. It goes like this:
Hey, hey, ho, ho, Eric Holder has got to go. And his gangly boss, too.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
