Posted on 01/15/2015 1:02:28 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The joke’s on them. Don’t the Saudis know that massive border fences do nothing to enhance domestic security and are, in fact, counterproductive? Well, I guess they’ll find out soon enough.
According to reports, the Saudi Kingdom is fed up with defending against ISIS raiding parties that routinely cross over the Iraqi border. In order to stave off these assaults, the Saudis are going to build a massive, 600-mile long border fence across the length of the country’s border with Iraq.
But that’s not all. The fence will be double layered with a concertina wire barrier in no man’s land. It will be equipped with underground movement sensors and fiber optic cables which are connected directly to authorities in Riyadh. On the Saudi side of the fence, 240 rapid response vehicles will patrol the border along with helicopters that will support those manning the 38 communications towers and 32 military response stations strategically placed along the fence.
Unfortunately for the Saudis, they seem unaware of the cultural baggage associated with erecting a border fence.
In Up Against the Wall: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border, authors Edward Casey and Mary Watkins unpack the social stigmas associated with constructing barriers.
Quoting the political scientist Wendy Brown, author of the 2010 book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Casey and Watkins make the intellectual argument against self-defense.
Brown also argues that walls function as “national psychic defenses, as prophylactics against confrontation with our own ills or as projections onto others” (ibid., II4-115). They apply a “political-economic logic that converts the “poor, the colonized, and the exploited” into aggressors. To place obsessive attention on to supposed dangers at its borders diverts attention from the dangers within a society. In addition, such walls act to undermine a sense of being at home in the world. For the migrant, anxieties arise from displacement, exclusion, and insecurity, from being seen as a criminal intruder; for the citizen, the mentality of walls feeds a sense of oneself as in need of protection from external and internal threats, fostering, “a subjectivity that is defensive, parochial, nationalistic and militarized.”
Only someone many hundreds of miles from a dangerous border could write these words, but they are resonant within the academic establishment. For the Saudis, all the lamentations of the professorial class don’t matter one bit when the alternative is an unsecured border with an army of unspeakable brutes on the other side.
Of course, these academicians were not talking about Saudi Arabia. They were talking about the United States, and would perhaps be loath to hold the Saudis to the same standard they hold Americans. Not due to chauvinism, of course, but the “othering” to which the Arab world has been subject by Orientalizing Westerners for generations. Or some other similar nonsense.
All the professorial ruminations in the world cannot undo the simple truth that walls work.
Maginot Line anyone?
Something like this may stop one or two locos at the MX border.... but not a force of any size with mobility.
It would be cheaper for the US to put ground sensors in and add towers about 2 miles apart along the southern border with Marine snipers in each tower. A lot cheaper than a solid wall and probably pretty effective.
Also a good “Make work “ program for the saudis.
To quote the great - G.S. Patton, General, US 3rd Army
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to stupidity” But then again, so are most peoples indigenous to the Mideast.
Obummer building massive wall along border to keep illegal aliens in.
ther fixed it
The infantilism, or polymorphous perversity, of the elite class is on broad display in our culture. Borders may or may not be economic but they most certainly are nationalist, separating one nation from another.
The One Worlders want no borders. They claim to want a classless society but they lie. They want to be in their own elitist class with everyone else under their control. Their vision leads to tyranny of which the various manifestations of communism are obvious examples.
In their world a criminal cabal controls the masses with absolute power. Western culture broke that system down with the Magna Carta. And here it is again, more evil than ever.
Burn the ivory towers.
There is a growing problem with Saudi girls fleeing home and hearth for the great unknown. The sources I read gave estimates of 1,500 - 3,000 per year and attributed it to foreigners luring them with promises of lewd perverted acts...
A fence needs to be built around SA to keep whabbism in.
So....how many chicks does Bill Clinton have these days??
” The infantilism, or polymorphous perversity, of the elite class is on broad display in our culture. “
And they are killing us.
Wonder if he’s been skulking around on the Saudi border?
Hate to have the snipers on duty all the time. What’s wrong with mines?
Oldplayer
I wonder who the Saudis will hire to man this border security operation? To man the towers, installations, patrols and reaction forces would IMHO require at least 3,000 trained personnel.
The Saudi’s have so much money, they can’t figure out how to spend it. I think it would be to their advantage to import black dirt so they can raise their own foods before we cut them off our “welfare roles”.
...not inheritance rights, or the ability to go places without a male relative receiving text updates on your whereabouts, or permission to drive cars without ending up in anti-terrorism court. Not acceptance of Christian conversions, or better fashion choices, nope. Not job options, not even dinner and a movie or even shoes and chocolate.
I just figured that would kill every armadillo for two hundred miles. Maybe they can be set for a minimum pressure before they detonate.
And just remember, KSA is lucky enough to have an extensive border with Yemen as well as well as Iraq. Lovely neighborhood.
I was hanging out at a race with a buddy who is a retired Armor officer some years ago, and asked how he got the misc scars / burns on his forearms. Nothing too horrible, but it couldn’t have been fun at the time.
He was an adviser to the KSA’s King Fahd Armored Brigade, and he was on the border with Yemen at a time they were having border incidents. His vehicle took a round from a Yemeni T-55 and he lived to tell about it. Other vehicles from the King Fahd took out the T-55, it didn’t get a second shot off.
I’ve never traveled to the Middle East, but many images I’ve seen and descriptions of generations growing up in Muslim societies appear to illustrate that individual residences lie behind high concrete walls and fences. Perhaps in some cases this is by design to limit the damage of sand storms. It does however, give the impression of encasing ones property from prying eyes in a culture which covets possessions of non-believers.
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