The base instinctively sees that, even if that vision is presently inchoate, there is a moral as well as an intellectual repugnancy between Bush's policies in Iraq and on the border.
Contrary to the pervasive belief among leftists around the world, America does not seek to wage war where its vital interests are not at stake. The gravamen of the justification for the war in Iraq was to prevent Saddam Hussein from trading petrodollars for weapons of mass destruction which he could then turn upon us or pass off to terrorists groups who would in turn inflict them on us on a scale more ghastly than 9/11. Why fight and die in the barrios of Baghdad to protect America from WMDs when it took only 19 terrorists to bring down the World Trade Towers? Are there not 19 more terrorists in the world ready to smuggle a couple of nukes across the Mexican border? Have we in any sense made ourselves safer in this regard? Most thinking people would conclude that we have not. They would conclude, there cannot be any risk or surely we would have closed our own borders!
If there is a risk, Bush has been stunningly irresponsible in failing adequately to police the borders. So egregious is his misfeasance that the government admits to 12 million illegals on the loose some where in our midst! The number is more likely 20 million. Whatever the number, how can one have confidence in a Commander in Chief properly to wage war in Iraq when he has been so demonstrably inept at home?
If there is no risk, why are we fighting and dying in Iraq?
Our military force in Iraq is made up mainly, although not exclusively, by the sons of the lower middle class. While these boys sacrifice their lives or their limbs in Falluja, their economic prospects are daily diminished by a swelling tide of illegal immigrants taking their jobs and compromising their prospects, including their hopes for a college education. While they suffer unnecessarily because our government cannot treat them adequately in places like Walter Reade, illegal immigrants are succored cost free by a virtually every hospital in our land. Preoccupied with worry about their wives at home trying to feed the kids with food stamps, our soldiers learn that illegal immigrants are given every advantage of our social net. Eventually, our troops, their mothers, and their wives must be asking themselves, who are we fighting for?
A nation's sovereignty is utterly dependent on the integrity of its borders. One of the tests of international law is the ability of a nation which makes claim to being a nationstate to control its own borders. No borders, no country. George Bush has placed us in an anomalous position in which we are fighting and dying to create sovereignty for Iraq while we are indifferent to the erosion of our own.
A military worthy of the name is a culture based on a code. The code is comprised of honor and the rule of law. These things when adhered to yield pride and courage. So important is the sense of the rule of law to the military, that it has its own code of military Justice. We are learning that elections alone in Iraq are not enough to establish a viable and stable democracy, there must be a rule of law. The United States of America is undertaking simply to forget about the rule of law as it applies to 12 million or more criminals within its borders. When will the soldiers ask, "how can we simply turn on and off the rule of law?" Most of the illegal immigrants come from the land of the mordida where bribery is institutionalized as part of the very tradition of life. If you are stopped by a policeman in Mexico, he may be wearing a uniform, but he is eager to accept a bribe. This is not a culture of the rule of law, it is a culture which is repugnant to the code of the military. It is utterly contrary to the very image we are trying to establish for the police in Iraq. How soon before our military ask, "are we not the biggest of hypocrites?"
Our reserve and guard forces are liable to call up and to extension of service commitment and to multiple assignments in the Iraqi theater of war. They volunteered for these risks. But how long will it be before they ask themselves, "why must I returned to Iraq for the third time and spend many months away from my family and risk the loss of my life or my limb, when 12 million criminals in America are simply given the fruits of everything I am fighting for just because they broke the law? Why are they not compelled to serve?"
These repugnancies will eventually wreck support for Bush's war. He has only himself to blame.
