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EDITORIAL: Colorado Senators get tough to get Space Command meeting

By The Gazette editorial board February 5, 2023 | updated 2 years ago

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We need Space Command, not assurance the outcome will be fair.

Colorado’s two senators took a position of strength last week. They demanded a Space Command meeting. To get it, they threatened President Joe Biden.

If the government moves Space Command to Alabama, it will diminish the country’s security by disrupting a well-established command during dangerous times. Those unaware of modern communist threats need only hear Michael Bennet.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could weaponize TikTok against the United States,” Bennet wrote in a letter Thursday to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google.

Bennet wants the CEOs to remove TikTok from app stores immediately, given the social media platform’s “unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”

Bennet wrote this before news of a high-tech Chinese spy contraption hanging above critical U.S. military assets.

We face the insane proposition of Space Command relocation only because of brazen politics. Former President Donald Trump ordered the move after Colorado trounced him in the 2020 election. Alabama supported Trump by more than 25%. Trump bragged about the decision, taking sole responsibility during an Alabama radio interview.

After Trump’s order, Bennet and Hickenlooper could have responded in kind. This was a time for political judo, not gingerly dialogue.

With an evenly divided Senate, Bennet and John Hickenlooper should have withheld support for something important to Biden. They could have made their support of the “Inflation Reduction Act” in August contingent on Biden reversing Trump’s Space Command move. That’s how marquis politicians get their way.

Our senators passed on this option — one that posed an almost certain outcome. Instead, they helped pass the bill with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris and no concession on Space Command. They could have had both — Biden’s bill and Space Command.

Some frown upon the quid pro quo trading of congressional votes, but not Bennet and Hickenlooper.

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When Biden asked the Senate to confirm Brendan Owens as assistant secretary of defense for energy and installations last month, our senators got tough.

They issued an ultimatum. For their votes, they demanded a meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss the Space Command problem. Austin had blown them off for the past two years. To prove their conviction, they voted “nay” on Owens — a man they would otherwise support.

The senators threatened to oppose future nominations if they didn’t get a meeting. They failed to derail the Owens confirmation but got the president’s attention and their meeting with Austin.

“In the face of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s saber rattling in the Pacific, national security cannot just be one of many criteria. It has to be the central priority,” the senators said in a joint statement.

“We expressed these concerns to Secretary Austin today, and reiterated that, in the best interest of our national security, Space Command must remain in Colorado.”

They walked away with assurance the final ruling would not be “political.” In other words, prepare to accept any decision based on the dubious premise of an apolitical outcome.

If Space Command moves, it will be entirely political. One cannot make a tactical argument for any such move. Base dislocations come at the cost of personnel and expertise that take years to replace. Two federal watchdog reports found “significant shortfalls” in Trump’s decision.

If Space Command moves, it will be a political win for Trump and retired Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby — a former Democrat and longtime friend and colleague of Biden. It will be a political failure for Bennet and Hickenlooper.

Our senators used old-fashioned hardball politics to force a meeting with a man trying to avoid them. They obtained a promise that covers Austin and Biden no matter what they decide. That leaves Colorado with a hope and a prayer, not a guaranteed outcome our senators could have achieved last summer.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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