Rational Ways

"I am against vigilantes in the United States of America; I am for enforcing law in rational ways." --George W. Bush

I am against vigilantism, as are most Americans. I am also for a government that protects its people, and this government is failing. As I mentioned yesterday (and previously here, and here, and less seriously here), we have a major security risk in this country which defies explanation.

We've spent billions destroying the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring al Qaeda, and to attempt to establish a democracy there for the first time. We've spent billions more in Iraq removing a dictator that sponsored four terrorist groups (ANO or Fatah, al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, and the Palestine Liberation Front, or PLF ), invaded two neighboring countries, paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers to murder women and children. Saddam also gave sanctuary to the 1993 World Trade Center bomb-builder, used massed chemical weapon assaults not seen on a scale since World War I, and broke the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire literally thousands of times.

We're spending billions more to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure to a level better than what it was before the war, while simultaneously (and as time goes on, apparently more successfully) building a fledgling democracy that held free elections in less than half the time it took us in Japan and Germany after World War II. I support both of these invasions and nation-building projects, which give 50 million people a chance to decide their own destinies for the very first time.

Further, I support and understand the need to spend millions if not billions more to overtly and covertly destabilize dictatorships in Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Asian countries that support or allow terrorism. These expenditures are long term investments in global stability. They make sense.

What doesn't make sense is to spend lavishly on proactive measures overseas without supporting even minimally reactive defensive measures for our country here at home. I am, of course, talking about our anemic border security efforts, one area so far in two terms where George Bush's presidency has abjectly failed by any rational standard.

A group of concerned citizens calling themselves the Minutemen Project, frustrated by the failure of our government to address border security issues, is now stationed along 23 miles of the most porous section of our border with Mexico, a stretch of arid Arizona desert so poorly defended that somewhere in excess of 2/3 of those who criminally intend to enter our country succeed in their criminal effort. In real numbers, this translates to two million illegal aliens flowing over the border northward each year unchecked, with un-inspected cargo (certainly drugs, possibly weapons conventional or otherwise), unknown criminal background (a favorite ingress of violent central American gangs), and unknown intent.

The Department of Agriculture is more responsive and better equipped for their duties than is the Border Patrol. It is harder to get a guava into this country than a Guatemalan. That should tell you something, and that "something" isn't good. In fact, it's downright frightening.

So frightening, in fact, that American citizens, feeling abandoned (and rightly so) by their government, are staging an intervention. Hundreds of volunteers set up lawn chairs every few hundred yards, armed with binoculars, night vision scopes and occasional small arms for protection from violent border smugglers known as coyotes that traffic in people and drugs. These volunteers, in what was widely seen as a bit of political theater, are accomplishing something George W. Bush has not done (nor apparently tried to do) since 9/11: they are stopping or at least hampering illegal border crossings along the 23-mile stretch they are patrolling. So far, they've detected and lead authorities to a minimum of 118 illegals.

In addition, they've forced patrolling actions on the other side of the border by a Mexican government seeking to avoid confrontations (and no doubt, bad P.R.) between its illegally-acting citizens and the U.S. volunteers. This patrolling action, may I add, would almost certainly not occur otherwise.

The MSM/DNC reaction largely echoes Bush's irrational cry of vigilantism, though that reaction is hardly uniform among regional and local media who actually deal with these issues on the community level. A growing amount of media coverage is actually positive.

No, the peaceful, rational and practical action of the Minutemen Project is exactly the kind of intelligent (and surprisingly effective) protest needed to force our government to live up to its responsibilities.