“There’s no way this is not going to be very detrimental to us,” said John Stockley, a 74-year-old native of Eagle Pass. “I keep thinking if we took this money that’s going to be spent not just here, all along the border, and put it into the Mexican economy, we’d probably have people going back the other way.”
Of all the ignorant, ill-conceived, half-assed, politically motivated ideas to come out of BushWorld, the border fence ranks right up there with the war in Iraq. While the US-Canada border remains the longest undefended border in the world, Michael Chertoff and his merry band of wingnuts are well into one of the looniest schemes imaginable. They want to fence off Mexico from the US by spending BILLIONS of your tax dollars on a fence that will ultimately cover only 1/3 of the border. While there’s no guarantee that such a massive outlay will make us any safer from the specter of terrorism, it WILL protect us from the evil, dirty Brown People, which really seems to be what the fence is all about.
The border fence will separate families and damage, if not destroy altogether, cross-border economic activity. There’s no convincing evidence that the fence will prevent Brown People and terrorists (is there a difference?) from crossing the border illegally, but it may well destroy small border towns, particularly in Texas. There are many places like Eagle Pass, where the border is merely a formality and cross-border traffic is the rule rather than the exception. Money flows both ways, and without this economic traffic, towns like Eagle Pass may well wither and perhaps even die altogether. Meanwhile, the vast majority of shipping containers that enter this country are never checked, and a terrorist armed to the teeth could walk across the Canadian border unmolested. So, you tell me- where’s the REAL threat? As far as I’m concerned, he’s sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office
In the final analysis, it seems that the border fence is merely so much window dressing, a physical manisfestation of this Administration’s commitment to prosecuting the war on terror. In the spirit of the Law of Unintended Consequences that seems to follow Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © like a black cloud, the border wall will likely serve an unintended purpose. It will serve as a reminder of this Administration’s misguided devotion to symbolic and ultimately meaningless gestures. It will certainly help to cement Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © reputation for placing ideology over practicality and intellectual inflexibility over people. At some point, Commander Codpiece © decided that a border fence would certainly keep out the evil Brown People terrorists, so therefore a fence there would be. It didn’t matter how poorly conceived an idea the fence was, nor was the collateral and economic damage the fence would do to American border communities ever considered. The Decider © had made a decision, and by GOD the fence would be built. After all, the security of his legacy the American people is Job One, no?
If, and/or when, Homeland InSecurity begins seriously discussing the idea of walling off the Canadian border, I cannot accept the suppostion that a fence along the Mexican border is a reasonable and prudent solution. It is a symbolic gesture, however- and ultimately a wasteful and destructive one. You’d think that as a former Governor of the Great State of Texas, that this sorry excuse for a human being President would have a better understanding of the realities of life along the US-Mexico border. That, of course, would presume that the man actually gave a damn about anything but his legacy and his rich and powerful friends. If you believe that he does, I’ve got a bridge in Eagle Pass I’d be willing to sell you….
