Our troops deserve every good thing that comes their way. Yet the House vote late Tuesday – designed to whisk them through airport security, unlike their fellow citizens — is another wedge between the defenders and defended that we wrote about in a Time cover story a couple of weeks back. The House approved the relaxed standards for those in uniform, and their families, on a 404-0 vote. The proposal now heads to the Senate.
“It is past due for so many of our nation’s heroes serving our great country,” Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn., said of the bill he authored entitled The Risk-Based Security Screening for Members of the Armed Forces Act. “Our soldiers who are putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere should be afforded extra respect when returning home to their loved ones and shouldn’t be viewed as potential terrorists in our airports.”
Fair enough. Just not how sure that kind of language will go over with the families of the 12 soldiers killed by Army Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood two years ago.
