Posted on 06/17/2002 1:50:25 PM PDT by Tancredo Fan
That I was getting bored thinking you might have direct answers to serious questions?
That while on the subject of fallacies (a subject you brought up with a false charge of ad hominem against me) I thought I'd go back a few posts and dredge up one of you earlier beauties that I'd politely ignored?
Both, actually.
Liars, blowhards and grandstanders seem to gravitate towards Tancy, et al.
Fitting but sad.
Happy frothing, boys.
Sorry, it will never happen. Enforcing immigration law is not a duty of the DoD, it is a civil matter.
Theoretically, they would be controlling any and all point of entry into the US, including every mile of shoreline, every international airport, every sea port, every train and bus station where people are arriving from either Canada or Mexico.
Is there some common identifying, readily visible mark that all citizens have that would make it possible for the Army to just look at you and figure out whether you're a citizen or an alien?
Can they figure out on sight that I am a naturalized citizen in spite of my obvious Hispanic looks? Will they be able to differentiate between an American of mexican descent from El Paso, and a well-dressed border crasher from Mexico DF?
One last thing, I understand your hard-line stance on law breakers...should the US government go after each and every tax cheater out there? Are you in favor of massive INS audits to find and punish tax cheaters?
No, they're based on the requirement to check every damn lumber barge coming from Canada BEFORE they dock--or even get close to shore, for that matter (Canada has the world's worst immigration enforcement--they make our border look like the old Berlin Wall), establish a surveillance grid covering the lakes, keep a sailing plan for every boat on the US side of the lakes, track every boat and intercept any of them behaving suspiciously (the Great Lakes have a LOT of small boat traffic), the need for multiple patrol boats per patrol station (patrol boats do not have long-term crew accomodations or self-repair facilities; they must come into port frequently for upkeep and crew rest), the need to maintain their boats and aircraft (for every boat in the water, there's at least one in drydock), PLUS perform the other Coast Guard missions in the area.
Of course, if you just make it a 9-to-5 Monday-to-Friday mission that involves sailing around the Great Lakes and not doing anything useful...yeah, no need for greatly enlarging the Coast Guard.
Either come to a solution for the problem (invade Mexico and replace their government with something more to our liking) or admit that you don't have a clue.
Which means that they will be operating at every port of entry--including every international airport, every train station that handles traffic from Canada, and every stretch of highway within 100 miles of the border.
Now, maybe you like the idea of being under martial law. I don't.
No, it's to either enforce the laws of the United States using the powers of the duly constituted civil authorities, or, if the only way to solve this problem is to use the military, to invade Mexico, remove its governing institutions, and replace them with ones more to our liking.
Actually, as to the distinction of using a military only against a military, I believe I heard that fighter planes are now going to be given the orders to shoot down hijacked planes. Actually, 9/11 was not a military action (in your distinction), but would you have used the military to stop that if you had the opportunity?
Wow, did you think up that bit of sophistry all by yourself, or is Glenn Spencer emailing you talking points?
Contemplate carefully the differences between the environment of aircraft operating in the sky and armies operating on the ground.
Now examine the areas where the US has been successful in employing the military as border defenses. They have typically involved areas where the main threat is invasion by a large, organized, and mechanized army. Where the US military has NOT been successful has been in dealing with small groups of unarmed (or even only lightly armed) people who are at best only loosely organized crossing a border. Again, our experience in Kosovo is particularly instructive: we are successfully keeping the tanks and artillery of the VJ (the Yugoslav Army) out of Kosovo, and failing miserably at keeping the KLA and its hangers-on out, despite the fact that we're actually spending a lot more effort on the latter task.
The new 'armies' coming against us are not of the tank, helicopter, big gun type, at least from what I see. So what do we use against them?
We use the duly constituted civil law enforcement power. Just because you call them an "army" doesn't make them an army.
I am serious when I ask for a solution. Many on here disagree as to the solution - so what would you do?
First, I would not use the military for a law enforcement problem.
Second, I would actually enforce the law.
However, to do that, you're going to have to quit talking to the people who already agree with you that it's a problem, and talk to the large mass of folks out there who do NOT see it as a serious problem--or only see it as an abstract problem, and don't back concrete efforts to fix it.
And, finally, if you see a truck with both a large number of day laborers and an americanpatrol.com bumper sticker out there on the freeway, tell the idiot driving it that he ain't helping matters any...
The border patrol and INS agents will handle the border check points, train stations and interior highways.
The 73,000 new federal employees hired for airport security will handle the airports.
After all, you don't want them just sitting around on their big,
Federal Air Transportation
Airport Security Service
jackets? Do you?
LOL!
We can't be any fairer than that.
If they don't want to lose their assets, then they shouldn't commit crime.
I hope they use their nicest, best maintained boats, first. I don't want to be buying any junk at auction.
LOL!
If it's my dumbest post, it's only because of the abysmally low quality of argument you used, pal.
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