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"Or Osama could come by sea anywhere along our thousands of miles of coastline, by container,"

We should be inspecting 100% of all containers and cargo entering the US. It is doable, and it's vital to our security to do so. Otherwise, terrorists could just as easily ship some nukes here, then stroll across our open borders and pick them up for later use. Not a safe situation. We need to beef up the Coast Guard, inspect all containers, and secure all borders.

"walk across the Canadian border in one of million unpopulated locations"

While I agree that our northern border is not well secured either, we at least have far less threat vectors from that direction. Our Canadian neighbors may not be great with their anti-terrorism policies, but they do at least exist. We have cooperation between our intelligence agencies, and Canada isn't about to allow Osama to fly right in and make himself at home.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of our southern neighbors. Aside from the governments sympathetic to Osama (I can see Venezuela inviting him to fly in), there are plenty to our South that just don't give a damn. They're not checking who's coming into their country because they don't care and they don't have the money to do anything if they did care. That leaves ample opportunity for Osama and his henchmen to fly into any one of various countries, then make the land trek into the US. So long as they take along some bribe money, it's not as though they'd have any difficulty making it past any Mexican police encountered along the way.

We're already catching a lot of African and Middle Eastern illegals crossing our southern border. I haven't heard of anything like that happening on the Canadian border. That said, I'd certainly support beefing up the secure along that border as well. Perhaps the USBP could shift all operations to the Canadian border once the southern border is militarized.

"Nevertheless, doubling the border guard would have little affect on any of the above."

We can bring illegal immigration across our southern border to a halt. An Israeli style wall with constant patrols by trained military personnel would prevent virtually every crossing and would quickly identify those willing to use force to enter this country illegally.

"This is a big country with thousand and thousands of miles of border/sea crossings with millions of tons of trade passing over them daily."

Sea crossings are difficult to do to begin with, as you have to have ships capable of traveling for extended periods over the open ocean. I doubt Osama wants to spend a few months out at sea; nor would his terrorist buddies. Chances are, they'll fly into the closest country they can safely enter and then attempt to enter the US from there. We cannot secure every inch of coastline, but we can make it extremely difficult for ships capable of making the voyage across the ocean to get to US coastline without being seen and cleared, and we can make it all but impossible to cross the southern border without US authorization. We can make it far more difficult to cross the Canadian border undetected, and combine that with united intelligence efforts with Canadian agencies to provide a more comprehensive security arrangement. As for the trade, it will adjust to meet the new security conditions. Processes for clearing goods can be streamlined and optimized. Any slowdowns that are necessary to provide for the national security of the United States override economic concerns. Your goods may be slightly delayed every once in a while, but at least you'll still have a store standing in which to sell those goods.

"You will fail stopping Osama from crossing the border if that's what he really wants to do."

Nope; we can make it all but impossible for him or his henchmen (or anyone else) to do so. You also have to consider the deterrent factor of such a wall. You're going to have virtually no illegals trying to cross the border if they have an impossible task ahead of them. They cross now because they can walk or be driven across fairly easily. With high security measures in place and a virtually impossible challenge of getting across the border, we'll see an enormous drop in attempts to cross the border illegally. That means we end up with more personnel defending the border against less attempted intruders. That further decreases the chances of people like Osama's terrorist buddies getting into the US across the border.

"We are not talking about armies crossing the borders, were talking individuals."

So is Israel, and their wall is working.

"The solution to our problems can't lie there because if they do, we will surely fail."

You consider the Israeli efforts to be doomed to failure as well?

"You want to spend resources on feel good solutions not based on effectiveness."

How exactly is a 2,000 mile Israeli security wall patrolled by National Guard troops and Hellfire-equipped Predator drones completely blocking unauthorized traffic across our southern border a "feel good" solution "not based on effectiveness"? If cutting off the new primary attack vector for our enemy is a "feel good" solution, then sign me up.

"Much like searching old ladies and children that board airplanes... It has the appearance of security... Where little really exists..."

I'm of the opinion that if you want true security on the plane, you search each and every individual attempting to board the airplane. Search every bag, every person, and every other foreign object not bolted to the airplane itself that's being placed on board. Then and only then can you be ensured that you have a secured aircraft. As it stands, the security at most airports (from my experience) stinks. For instance, while they make you take your laptop out of its carrier case for carry-on, they don't even bother having you turn it on for them. I could fit any number of different things in the casing for my laptop and have it look perfectly legitimate from outward appearance, but they would all require destroying the laptop's functionality. That's just one example out of many. Privatize the security forces again and provide serious sanctions against airlines that do not take security seriously.