The Liberal Patriot

Loyalty Above Skill, Avarice Above Honor

J.G. Schwam - December 3, 2004

The appointment of Bernard Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security proves that the Bush administration does not see the position as deserving anything more than a yes man. Neither Kerik nor the DHS prior secretary Tom Ridge had any real law enforcement or security experience. The talking heads will tell us Kerik was the police commissioner of New York City. His tenure in that position was one of the shortest on record. Neither the line officers nor the patrolmen had any respect for him. He had never served among them. His previous position as head of the nation’s largest municipal prison, New York City’s Rikers Island was marred by scandal. Under his tenure at Rikers a Salvador Dali drawing displayed in the prison lobby was stolen, drug use at the prison escalated and numerous allegations of scandal were levied against him. His harsh abusive style at Rikers was his legacy there. Kerik is not a law enforcement or security professional any more than Tom Ridge was.

Kerik who was appointed New York City’s police commissioner in August of 2000 held the position for barely more than a year was promptly dismissed by incoming Mayor Bloomberg who saw fit to re-appoint former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly under whose previous term crime in the city dropped to record levels. Not so for Kerik. Under his brief term the New York City Board Education’s security force was brought under the Police Department, violence in city schools escalated. Kerik turned Kelly’s highly successful community policing initiative into what may called a war on minorities. His brief term was marred by the Amdiou Dialo scandal in which three of Kerik’s anti-street crime task force police officers fired 49 rounds at an unarmed man, killing him in the vestibule of his own apartment building as he committed crimes later called by black leaders, being black in New York and returning home from work late at night.

The ideal of a president appointing the best and brightest to lead and protect us does not apply in the Bush administration. Their goal is the most loyal and most compliant. Kerik serves this goal not by virtue of his skills, qualifications or intelligence but by his ambition and avaricious love of power. From day one however his loyalty to former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani and all things republican was unquestioned. In Bush’s GOP loyalty is more important than morals, skills, sensibility or qualifications. Kerik possess none of these but loyalty above honor. They continue to demonstrate this appointment after appointment. Kerik's tenure as security chief in Iraq produced nothing of the sort. In fact while Kerik held that position security in Iraq deteriorated to the point that every aid agency including the United Nations, CARE, Doctors Without Borders and others left while their workers were shot, killed by bombers, kidnapped and beheaded. The blood of one of the planets true best and brightest Sergio Vieira de Mello, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who was killed in Iraq is on Kerik's hands.

If they took homeland security seriously there are consummate professionals that could be considered for the position such as Jules Kroll, head of the worlds most respected security firm Kroll Associates for one. Perhaps the integrity, skill and commitment to his trade that made Kroll tops in his field are the very traits that would disqualify him in Bush’s eyes and the very reason why Kerik got the job instead.

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