Forget Mexico. What America really needs is tighter border security in the north to keep out those pesky Canadians!
(Right, D.R.?)
Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano is determined to beef up security along the rough and tumble Canadian border. That's right, Canada.In a dramatic break with the Bush administration, Napolitano is offering a novel rationale for stepped up vigilance on the Canadian border. A rationale that her boss, the President, must beamingly approve of as "real change."The former Arizona governor, in a spasm of liberal-ese, said:"One of the things that I think we need to be sensitive to is the very real feeling among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border." [Italics added]The nation's top security official is saying that plowing tax dollars into more security along the Canadian border has nothing to do with current or imminent or potential threats to the American homeland, but to fairness. Fairness out of concern for feelings.
Fairness is, of course, a very important tenet of liberalism. And feelings, not reason, are often the trigger for policy. . . . .
Some wags may charge that Napolitano is a lightweight among -- largely -- lightweights in the Obama cabinet. But the important distinction is that she is a lightweight with a critical portfolio. The Department of Homeland Security isn't supposed to be a proving ground for touchy-feely policies. Some may be very sorry that Mexico's feelings will be hurt by tougher security measures along its border, but those measures are dictated by necessity.The dangers to America's national security on its southern border are disproportionately greater than anything presented along the Canadian border.
The war among Mexico's drug cartels, now embroiling the national government, is responsible for over ten thousand deaths in the past few years. That's over twice the total number of American deaths in Iraq since 2003.
Drug cartel violence has spilled over into major American metropolises like Phoenix and Atlanta. Border towns from Calexico to Brownsville routinely grapple with violent crime exported from Mexico. Coyotes -- the handlers and transporters of many illegals -- all too frequently murder, rape, rob and extort their clients.
America's southern border is undermanned and thinly patrolled. President Obama isn't even paying lip service to building The Fence. In fact, his budget proposal eliminates funding to complete it. The porous southern border isn't merely an entry way for hardscrabble Mexicans looking for a better life in the good old U.S. of A. Plenty of criminals enter unchecked as well; and, very possibly, sleeper cell terrorists. . . . .
By comparison, the Canadian border is a Quaker community writ large. Unlike Third World Mexico, Canada is a stable and prosperous neighbor. Canadians aren't clamoring to invade the United States, unless annual trips by snowbirds to Florida and Arizona count.
The nearly four thousand mile long border shared by the United States and Canada has been open virtually since the end of the War of 1812. Thousands of Canadians and Americans transit the border daily, for work and play. Incidents are relatively few.
And in what should warm the heart of Secretary Napolitano, Canada is America's largest trading partner. The two nations' economies are enmeshed and complimentary in ways that far outpace anything that exists between Mexico and America.
That's not to say that the United States should not be concerned about security along a border that ranges from the Atlantic across the vast, sparsely populated prairies of western Canada to the Pacific. But both countries already cooperate closely. . . . .
One suspects that underneath Napolitano's harebrained pronouncement and kindergarten teacher fixation for fair play lays a grittier political calculation. Hispanics are a large and growing voter bloc in these United States. The Democrats want to own Hispanic votes in the same way they own African American votes.
Napalitano is really turning out to be quite the gaffe-prone political hack.
I think Napalitano needs to resign her position and be appointed to a position where she can't do much damage. Maybe she could be an ambassador.
Ambassador to Canada.
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