Dollars and the DOD (with thanks to Charles Van Eaton)

         “The department of defense is a sinecure, a massive, unfathomable, black hole for taxpayer dollars that has never been, and perhaps never can be, plumbed to its hellish depths.”

         If Chuck Hagel really were qualified to be Secretary of Defense, and if he had the insight and courage necessary for the job, he’d have begun his testimony before the Senate with those words, or words very much like them.

         He did not.

         He did not either because he does not know the truth about the DOD or, if he does know it, he does not have the moral fortitude and common sense to speak that truth.  Both failures are disqualifying.

         The DOD put the “sin” in sinecure, and is the greatest, most expansive, and expensive example of it in human history.  The DOD is irrefutable evidence that the fog of war breeds the fog of war accounting, which no auditor, or army of auditors (much less the Army’s auditors) can bring to light.  Knowing that, Hagel ought to say that he will do the next best thing possible:  He himself will go through DOD expenses and requests line-by-line and eliminate everything not directly related to maintaining, deploying, and protecting our fighting forces on the ground, on the seas, or in the air.  Whatever does not do that gets axed, period.

         Pentagon-run grocery stores do not do it.  Axing them saves 9 billion a year.  Eliminating non-military research saves 6 billion.  Educating military children on bases in the US (where they might presumably be educated in the nearest pulbic school system, sad as that prospect might be to folks like me who do not trust that system) costs almost 11 billion.   Research in global warming does not do it.  Cutting back on that saves us another billion dollars a year.   I’m an ex-Marine.  I know the importance of the Marine Corps blues and greens, which are uniforms of great distinction.  Marine Corps greens are a world away from greens in the Marines.  We need the former, not the latter.  You get the picture.

         Hagel doesn’t.

         But my point is not about Chuck Hagel.  My point is about the DOD, which does to expenses what the CERN lab in Geneva does to particles -- it accelerates them almost beyond human imagination.  Or, to maintain the scientific analogy, the DOD is a massive black hole from which not even light itself can emerge, much less taxpayer money.

         It’s time to change the game.

         You don’t change the game by leaving it in the hands of politicians who think their re-election hinges upon more DOD pork for their constituents.  You don’t change it by trusting it to career DOD bureaucrats, whose very livelihood depends upon continued or increased annual funding.  You don’t even change it by appeal to the leftist greenies, who normally deplore the military–industrial complex, except now when its funding is their funding too.

         Maybe the game is so far gone it can’t be changed.   If it can’t, then Hagel should know it.  But he didn’t say.

         I think it’s basically an impossible mess.  If it is as bad as it looks to me, I do not trust the folks who run government to fix it.  They have the opposite of a Midas touch.  It’s not that everything they touch turns to gold; it’s that everything they touch turns to garbage and costs a lot of gold.

         Fix the DOD?  We’ve been trying to fix baseball for years, ever since the designated hitter rule snaked its filthy way into just half of MLB.  If you can’t fix something as elegantly simple as baseball, you can’t fix the most complicated and advanced system of national defense the world has known.

         I don’t normally descend into a counsel of despair, but this time I’m dangerously close.  It reminds me of the movie title, “No Way Out,” which, you’ll recall, was about the DOD.

Doubling Down on Ignorance and Failure

         You can no more break the laws of economics than you can break the law of gravity.  Try if you must, but the outcome is certain:  Rather than break such laws, you break yourself against them.  And if, against all sense, you try it again, the result will be the same.  Doubling down on ignorance and failure means more ignorance and more failure, not success.

         By re-electing Barack Obama, the American voters have doubled down on ignorance and failure.  They obviously think the boneheaded policies that led to:

(1) higher unemployment,

(2) lower household income,

(3) more jobs going overseas,

(4) the greatest one-term growth in national debt in history,

(5) expanded intergenerational dependency on the state,

(6) trillions of dollars of fiat money flooding the market place, and

(7) millions more persons living in poverty and on food stamps

will magically lead to something completely different in the future.

         It’s not going to happen.

         If you still think that the most partisan president is really the post-partisan president, then don’t be surprised if partisanship flourishes even more in the next term than it did in the last, when the Republicans were literally locked out of health care reform discussions and debates, and when every budget passed by the Republican-led House was killed in the Democrat-led Senate – every one.  If that’s what you think about partisanship, you are not thinking at all.  You are not even paying attention. 

         If you think that the Democrats, who failed to pass even one budget in four years will suddenly start passing them now, much less governing according to those budgets, you are part of the problem, not the solution.

         If you think that the politically motivated failure to protect our own land and personnel overseas against terrorist attacks on the anniversary of 9/11, despite repeated and desperate pleas for help coming from the victims themselves, and that the Obama administration’s craven lies and misdirection that for weeks followed the slaughter will make for a safer America or a safer world, you are the Jihadist’s dream come true.

         If you think that a culture that slaughters its babies for convenience or for money won’t slaughter its elderly for the same reasons, then please don’t be surprised when you, your friends, or your family are eventually disposed of by the very bureaucracy charged, ironically, with national health care.  Your capital offense, the thing that lowers the death sentence upon you:  Getting older and getting expensive.  When the choice is between you and money, and when the government has no money, you die.  Please notice:  the government has no money.    

         If you think that Barack Obama failed so miserably in his first term because he inherited a mess, then how can you expect anything but proportionally greater failure from him when he tries to fix the even greater mess he inherited from himself?

         Or, if you want it in an epigram:  “If you fail to learn the easy way, then you are doomed to learn the hard way, if you learn at all.”

Geopolitical Debate

Jonathan,

         Thanks for your thoughtful and well-articulated response, which I appreciate.  I value your contribution even if, as perhaps you’d suspect, I dissent.

         Yes, other administrations have had border agent injuries and fatalities.  That does not mean the Obama administration is not responsible for its own, especially in light of the bizarrely conceived and executed “Fast and Furious” program, and the way the administration so aggressively opposes at law the states trying to protect themselves against the hordes of illegals that now cross our borders, the total number of whom now reaches more than 13 million.

         Among those illegals are plenty of folks from the more than 30 nations we deem terrorist supporters or terrorist regimes.  We know this because of the documents they leave behind, things like bomb-making manuals, copies of the Koran, and maps of possible terrorism targets.  Yet the Obama administration seeks frequently to hinder those who want to protect us from illegal aliens and from their armed and dangerous protectors, which results in dead and injured agents and which has turned Tucson into the kidnapping capital of North America.

         Empires are attacked because of their oppression and injustice.  They are attacked in spite of  their strength, not because of it.  Whether justly or unjustly, their strength delays or prevents attack.  When I say that peace comes through strength I have in mind nations like Switzerland, which stayed at peace and remained unattacked even while two world wars raged around them on all sides.  The Swiss made the price of entry simply too high for anyone to pay.  No one wanted a piece of that snarling badger, so they left Switzerland alone.  They had peace through strength. 

         Not only do we have deadly enemies, they have killed us by the thousands.  They will kill us by the thousands more if they get the chance.  They look for that chance every day.  They have killed Israelis by the thousands too.  Indeed, they seek ways to wipe Israel off the map and are working toward that end every day, whether in the past it was Saddam Hussein lobbing SCUD missiles into Israel or paying $22,000 to the surviving families of Palestinian terrorists who died while killing Israelis, or in the present it is the Iranians who, against the will of the civilized world, seek the nuclear weapons it needs to annihilate Israel.  So great is the threat to Israel that Henry Kissinger said last week that he didn’t think Israel would exist as a nation for even 10 more years.

         And you cannot appease those who, for religious reasons, seek your death.  That is not how religious extremists think or operate.  Militant Islam has been at war with the West for centuries upon centuries.  Nothing has stopped them, whether appeasement, defeat, or something in between.  Nothing but the end of time will stop them.  As long as this world lasts, Islamic hatred for the West will continue.  We must make our policies on that basis.

         Putin is an ex-KGBer.  The “ex” is only institutional, not by personal conviction.  In his mind and methods, he is what he always was.  He is at the head of resurgent communism in Russia, which hasn’t changed its goals, just modified some of its methods.  The Chinese communists are the same in that regard.  They still mean to be what they always meant to be -- first the Asian and then the global hegemon.  They adjust their methods to their changing circumstances, but their end game is not thereby altered, only the way they get to it.

         North Korea is no threat to us, you are quite right.  They do their best to ally with some of our enemies, but they exist only at China’s will.  The Chinese could end that pathetic little regime at any moment, and no one would stop them.  The North Koreans do what they do by China’s passive, sometimes active, will and permission.  In that light, the only reason that you can go to class every day in peace, or even at all, is because of American power.  You have peace through American strength, of which China is more than well aware.  That’s what keeps them out of Taiwan, out of the disputed Senkaku islands, and out of South Korea.

         Again, Jonathan, many thanks.      

    

Barack and I

         A liberal told me yesterday that I am not as good a thinker as Barack Obama.

         Perhaps that is so; perhaps it is not.

         But I know this, and Barack Obama doesn’t:

         (1) Keynesian economics is a great failure.  Massive government spending is not the engine that drives a thriving economy, and it is not the path to prosperity.  Neither is a crushing national debt.

         (2) Demand-side economics does not produce goods and services in the same lush way as does supply-side economics, which means that if you want sound policy you ought to read Arthur Laffer, not J. M. Keynes.

         (3) Amassing 16 trillion dollars in debt leads to credit downgrades, higher interest rates, and a lethargic marketplace characterized by reduced investment and higher unemployment, not to economic prosperity.

         (4) You cannot be safe if you have porous borders.  Neither can your border agents.

         (5) No nation has ever been attacked because it was too strong, but many have been attacked because they were too weak and could not mount an effective defense.  Peace comes through strength; weakness invites attack.

         (6) We have deadly enemies who cannot be appeased.  Our deadly enemies are Israel’s deadly enemies.  The US and Israel, therefore, need to stand together.

         (7) Ideas do not die simply because they have been refuted roundly, soundly, and repeatedly.  Communism is not dead and it will not die.  It simply and continually re-organizes.  Vladimir Putin and his ideological allies in China and North Korea are up to no good.  Never trust them to have your best interests at heart -- never.

         (8) A nation that cannot or will not acknowledge God inevitably thinks that government is the highest power; that self-satisfaction is the highest good; and that self-indulgence is the best path to it.

         (9) A nation that slaughters its young cannot be trusted to know the right thing or to do it.  It cannot be trusted to make the heavy sacrifices necessary to maintain freedom.  That nation falters because it has severed the connection between duty and liberty.  Without the higher calling and higher morality that only life under God brings, nothing more profound than mere orgasm rules the citizens’ actions.

         (10) Neither private virtue nor public duty has any suitable substitute.  Either you do the right thing or you slide downhill.  No other option exists.

Arab Spring, Arab Fall, and the Train of War

         The seeds Barack Obama planted with American apologies, American money, and American military assistance in the Arab Spring are being harvested now as we enter the Arab Fall.

         That harvest is, as anyone not a fool would have predicted, a harvest of anti-American hatred, violence, murder, animosity, and fanaticism that spans the Arab world.  That harvest is not yet fully in the barn, and it won’t be until the threat of a nuclear Iran as been eliminated and the future of Israel secured.  Toward that end, the president has not stopped Iran at all.  Indeed, he has hardly even slowed it down.  He talks, indeed he talks frequently, but his talk has stopped nothing, unless one perhaps asserts that his talk show appearances have stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from visiting Obama, though it did not stop the representatives of the Muslin Brotherhood in Egypt from doing so.

         Barack Obama has forgotten, if ever he knew, that no nation has ever been attacked for being too strong.  But plenty of nations have been attacked for being weak, whether that weakness was real or merely perceived.  His apologies make us look weak.  His actions make us weak in fact.  In the Arab world, that is a gold-embossed invitation to conflict.

         We are weak because he has not issued credible pronouncements to host nations in the Arab world that our embassies will be protected from violence one of two ways:  Either the host nation will provide that iron-clad protection or else we will do it ourselves with our own soldiers, our own equipment, in our own way, under own our command, and in our own timing.  Because those host nations have failed abjectly to provide for our diplomats what every other civilized country has provided as a matter of course, whether those nations are friend or foe, Barack Obama must tell the now-negligent Arab countries that the second option is the only option left.  He must tell them that we will protect ourselves to whatever degree we, not they, think is necessary, and do so in ways we, not they, think are suitable.  He must say this not as bluster but as settled policy.

         When Obama takes this burden of self-protection upon us, he must never forget that even preparing for a worst-case scenario might not be enough because in the Arab world simply to prepare for the worst case is sometimes too optimistic.  Either that or close down our embassies there and their embassies here.  If our Arab counterparts wish for the diplomatic option to remain open, then they must provide a safe arena in which it can take place, just as we do.

         Judging from his own actions and his own words, both before he became president and after, Barack Obama is either incapable of, or unwilling to, produce the resolve needed to deal effectively with nations dominated by the religion of his father, of his step-father, and of his own early education.  He is shockingly unprepared for Islamic violence.  As a result, he leaves his own diplomats ridiculously under-protected.  Marines without bullets is not adequate protection for melting ice cream, much less for an embassy or a consulate, and certainly not in Arab nations, not now.

         By saying “not now,” I am not saying that this threat and this violence are new or that they are the result of an obscure, low budget, amateurish, and highly deplorable film against Islam.  Perhaps I might think so if this violence hadn’t been going on for 1,500 years and occurred simultaneously in multiple countries on the anniversary of 9/11.

         Right now, Barack Obama must do two things:

         First, and most importantly, he must, as Netanyahu insists, draw a line in the sand for Iran.  That line should demand that Iran cease its nuclear weapons procurement efforts and that it open its nuclear program to full and unfettered outside inspection.  He also must place a deadline on that compliance, a deadline very, very close at hand.  He should state unequivocally what the consequences of noncompliance will be, and make those consequences staggeringly harsh so that no other course but compliance is remotely feasible.  If he does not, Iran will not comply and very likely a regional nuclear war will ensue (assuming any nuclear war can actually remain regional).  Iran must see not even the slightest crack of daylight between us and our Israeli allies.  To see a even a small such crack is to invite Iran to think it can divide and conquer. 

         Second, and more easily, because the photos surrounding the murder of Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues are numerous, clear, and widely available, Obama must demand that the Libyan government assist us in identifying, tracking down, and bringing to justice the killers and their cohorts.  We cannot trust the Libyans themselves to do it any more than we could trust them to keep the American compound and its occupants safe in the first place.

         Barack Obama must remember that inaction is action. He must not permit it of himself or his Arab counterparts.  We already are sliding toward war in the Middle East.

         The war train is coming.  The engineer’s chair is empty.  Obama needs to fill it and bring that train to an immediate halt. 

Condi Rice's Speech before the RNC

Prepared Remarks at Republican Convention

Good evening. Distinguished delegates, fellow Republicans, fellow Americans.

We gather here at a time of significance and challenge. This young century has been a difficult one. I will never forget the bright September day, standing at my desk in the White House, when my young assistant said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center – and then a second one – and a third, the Pentagon. And then the news of a fourth, driven into the ground by brave citizens that died so that many others would live. From that day on our sense of vulnerability and our understanding of security would be altered forever. Then in 2008 the global financial and economic crisis stunned us and still reverberates as unemployment, economic uncertainty and failed policies cast a pall over the American recovery so desperately needed at home and abroad.

And we have seen once again that the desire for freedom is universal – as men and women in the Middle East demand it. Yet, the promise of the Arab Spring is engulfed in uncertainty; internal strife and hostile neighbors are challenging the fragile democracy in Iraq; dictators in Iran and Syria butcher their own people and threaten the security of the region; China and Russia prevent a response; and all wonder, “Where does America stand?”

Indeed that is the question of the moment- “Where does America stand?” When our friends and our foes, alike, do not know the answer to that question – clearly and unambiguously -- the world is a chaotic and dangerous place. The U.S. has since the end of World War II had an answer – we stand for free peoples and free markets, we are willing to support and defend them – we will sustain a balance of power that favors freedom.

To be sure, the burdens of leadership have been heavy. I, like you, know the sacrifices that Americans have made – yes including the ultimate sacrifice of many of our bravest. Yet our armed forces remain the sure foundation of liberty. We are fortunate to have men and women who volunteer – they volunteer to defend us on the front lines of freedom. And we owe them our eternal gratitude.

I know too that it has not always been easy – though it has been rewarding – to speak up for those who would otherwise be without a voice – the religious dissident in China; the democracy advocate in Venezuela; the political prisoner in Iran.

It has been hard to muster the resources to support fledgling democracies– or to help the world’s most desperate - the AIDs orphan in Uganda, the refugee fleeing Zimbabwe, the young woman who has been trafficked into the sex trade in Southeast Asia; the world’s poorest in Haiti. Yet this assistance – together with the compassionate works of private charities – people of conscience and people of faith - has shown the soul of our country.

And I know too that there is weariness – a sense that we have carried these burdens long enough. But if we are not inspired to lead again, one of two things will happen – no one will lead and that will foster chaos --- or others who do not share our values will fill the vacuum. My fellow Americans, we do not have a choice. We cannot be reluctant to lead – and one cannot lead from behind.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand this reality -- that our leadership abroad and our well being at home are inextricably linked. They know what needs to be done. Our friends and allies must be able to trust us. From Israel to Poland to the Philippines to Colombia and across the world -- they must know that we are reliable and consistent and determined. And our adversaries must have no reason to doubt our resolve -- because peace really does come through strength. Our military capability and technological advantage will be safe in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s hands.

We must work for an open global economy and pursue free and fair trade – to grow our exports and our influence abroad. In the last years, the United States has ratified three trade agreements, all negotiated in the Bush Administration. If you are concerned about China’s rise – consider this fact – China has signed 15 Free Trade Agreements and is negotiating 20 more. Sadly we are abandoning the playing field of free trade – and it will come back to haunt us.

We must not allow the chance to attain energy independence to slip from our grasp. We have a great gift of oil and gas reserves here in North America that must be and can be developed while protecting our environment. And we have the ingenuity in the private sector to tap alternative sources of energy.

And most importantly, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will rebuild the foundation of American strength – our economy – stimulating private sector led growth and small business entrepreneurship. When the world looks at us today they see an American government that cannot live within its means. They see a government that continues to borrow money, mortgaging the future of generations to come. The world knows that when a nation loses control of its finances, it eventually loses control of its destiny. That is not the America that has inspired others to follow our lead.

After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history. That is the true basis of “American Exceptionalism.” The essence of America – that which really unites us -- is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea -- and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.

Ours has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have not believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have not been envious of one another and jealous of each other’s success. Ours has been a belief in opportunity and a constant battle – long and hard -- to extend the benefits of the American dream to all – without regard to circumstances of birth.

But the American ideal is indeed endangered today. There is no country, no not even a rising China, that can do more harm to us than we can do to ourselves if we fail to accomplish the tasks before us here at home.

More than at any other time in history –the ability to mobilize the creativity and ambition of human beings forms the foundation of greatness. We have always done that better than any country in the world. People have come here from all over because they believed in our creed – of opportunity and limitless horizons. They have come from the world’s most impoverished nations to make five dollars not fifty cents– and they have come from the world’s advanced societies – as engineers and scientists -- to help fuel the knowledge based revolution in the Silicon Valley of California; the research triangle of North Carolina; in Austin, Texas; along Route 128 in Massachusetts – and across our country.

We must continue to welcome the world’s most ambitious people to be a part of us. In that way we stay perpetually young and optimistic and determined. We need immigration laws that protect our borders; meet our economic needs; and yet show that we are a compassionate people.

We have been successful too because Americans have known that one’s status at birth was not a permanent station in life. You might not be able to control your circumstances but you could control your response to your circumstances. And your greatest ally in doing so was a quality education.

Let me ask you, though, today, when I can look at your zip code and can tell whether you are going to get a good education – can I really say that it doesn’t matter where you came from – it matters where you are going. The crisis in K-12 education is a grave threat to who we are.

My mom was a teacher – I have the greatest respect for the profession – we need great teachers – not poor or mediocre ones. We need to have high standards for our students – self-esteem comes from achievement not from lax standards and false praise. And we need to give parents greater choice – particularly poor parents whose kids – most often minorities -- are trapped in failing neighborhood schools. This is the civil rights struggle of our day.

If we do anything less, we will condemn generations to joblessness, hopelessness and dependence on the government dole. To do anything less is to endanger our global economic competitiveness. To do anything less is to tear apart the fabric of who we are and cement a turn toward grievance and entitlement.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will rebuild us at home and inspire us to lead abroad. They will provide an answer to the question, “Where does America stand?” The challenge is real and these are tough times. But America has met and overcome difficult circumstances before. Whenever you find yourself doubting us – just think of all the times that we have made the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect.

America’s victorious revolutionary founding – against the greatest military power of the time; a Civil War – hundreds of thousands dead in a brutal conflict – but emerging a stronger union; a second founding – as impatient patriots fought to overcome the birth defect of slavery and the scourge of segregation; a long struggle against communism – that ended with the death of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Europe, whole free and at peace; the will to make difficult decisions, heart-wrenching choices in the aftermath of 9/11 that secured us and prevented the follow-on attacks that seemed preordained at the time.

And on a personal note– a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham – the most segregated big city in America - her parents can’t take her to a movie theater or a restaurant – but they make her believe that even though she can’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter – she can be President of the United States and she becomes the Secretary of State. Yes, America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect. But of course it has never been inevitable – it has taken leadership, courage and an unwavering faith in our values.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the experience and the integrity and the vision to lead us – they know who we are, what we want to be and what we offer the world.

That is why this is a moment – an election – of consequence. Because it just has to be – that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth – will continue to be the most powerful!

May God Bless You – and May God continue to bless this extraordinary, exceptional country – the United States of America.

The mess he Inherited, the mess he left

       You hear Democrats talk repeatedly about the mess Obama inherited. But you never hear them talk about the enormously greater mess he will leave for the next president: (1) trillions of dollars more in debt, (2) far greater levels of poverty, (3) significantly higher levels of unemployment, (4) massively larger numbers of folks on food stamps and welfare, (4) higher gas and food prices, (5) a constrictive environment for investment, (6) more porous borders, (7) a war on marriage and traditional morality, and (8) a diminished military facing even greater budgetary diminishment in an ever-more dangerous world, including a nuclear Iran.
       Long as it is, this list is incomplete.

Border Security, not Border Bigotry

The United States is often maligned by other nations, and by its own liberals, for the way it deals with illegal aliens, whom it is said to mistreat and oppress.

But deporting law-breakers is neither mistreatment nor oppression.  Much less is paying for their schooling, their food, their housing, or their medical bills, which is what we often do for illegal aliens, a policy that has helped generate the financial tsunami overwhelming California at this moment.

We are said also to be xenophobic, as if we are opposed to Mexicans rather than to the endangerment of America and to the trampling underfoot of her laws.

But this is not an issue of bigotry.  This is not about Mexicans -- or Guatemalans, or Latvians, or Italians, or Swiss, or Tongans, or Koreans, or Tibetans, or South Africans, or any other nationality in the world.  It's about border security, which is one of the few obligations explicitly required of the federal government in the Constitution -- an obligation at which the current administration is now failing miserably.

No one objects to folks who enter America through the proper legal channels.  God bless them all.  May their number increase.  America is made from them.  But criminals don’t make America.  They unmake it, and America is not interested in being unmade and undermined.  Legal immigrants are welcome in America.   Illegal aliens are not.  Illegal aliens are law-breakers.  They are criminals.

By merely being deported rather than imprisoned, illegal aliens are being let off easily, so easily in fact that they often repeat their crime multiple times.  That is not mistreatment or oppression by America.  It’s alien recidivism.

Let everyone who wishes to come to America legally do so.  Let those who are unwilling to keep the law be sent home.  By the way, the latest figures show that more than 10% of those who enter America illegally from the south are adherents of militant Islam.  Because the total number of illegal aliens is now in the tens of millions, you can begin to calculate how much more danger we are in because of the illegal influx of those who want us dead or destroyed.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 30,147 illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico were apprehended in 2003; 44,614 were caught in 2004; 165,178 were nabbed in 2005; and 108,025 were detaied in 2006.  The great majority of them were apprehended along the U.S. Southwest border.  They came from 35 countries known to harbor Islamic terrorists.  Many were caught carrying terrorist literature, such as bomb-making guidebooks.

In other words, our border policy is about security, not bigotry.

In the theological circles where I move, Christian liberals go the accusation one better by throwing in passages from the Bible, like Exodus 22: 21:  "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt."  But in this context that reference is misunderstood and misapplied.  That’s not what the current situation is all about.  If you want to find out what Exodus says about our current situation, you'll have to look up passages on the proper punishment of criminals.

National Security and Partisan Politics

Islam's more consistent followers have declared war on all of American society, and therefore consider all members of our society fair game.  They kill children because children grow up to be soldiers.  They kill young women because young women give birth to more soldiers.  They kill workers because workers pay taxes that feed the military machine that resists the global imposition of sharia.  No one is safe because, to them, no one is innocent.

When I say “Islam's more consistent followers,” and not “Islamic extremists” attack us, I am saying, contrary to former President Bush, that Islam is not a religion of peace, either in its sacred texts or in its history.  It is a religion at war, and continually so, for centuries upon centuries. Violence is not an aberration. Violence is the modus operandi.  If Islam were a religion of peace, you’d hear those that now pose as Islamic moderates denouncing violence.  You’d hear that outcry arising from Islamic strongholds around the world.

Have I missed it?  

Perhaps it's a defect in me, but my mind runs habitually to the worst case scenario: dirty bombs, deadly chemicals, and poisonous biological agents all smuggled over American borders, both from the north and the south -- coupled with an American regime intent upon not protecting those borders and suing at law any state audacious enough to want to do so.  In other words, the worst case looks very much like today, when about one in ten of the illegal immigrants who invade our nation in that way is of middle-eastern (and presumably Islamic) background.

I read long ago that, given the desperately fallen character of our world, if you are not protected against the worst-case scenario, you are not protected.  The worst case sometimes happens.  If you are not protected against it, then your peace and security depend upon the good will of your enemy.  In that case, you have no peace and security.  The only real peace is a defendable peace, and ours, at the moment, is not properly defended.  To defend it now requires more -- much, much more -- than we have ever done before, both here and around the world.

The Obama administration is not up to the task, and never will be.  Despite this administration's declared aversion to fighting, it has us embroiled in three wars simultaneously.  Nevertheless, in the face of those three wars, and in the face of the global threat to which those three wars testify, our borders remain foolishly and recklessly under-protected.  That colossal stupidity might seem inexplicable, but it is not.

Try this thought experiment:  If ever you want to understand otherwise inexplicable public policy measures, you must ask yourself “Who benefits?”  On that count, if you wonder why the Obama administration does not close the borders, the answer lies in the preservation of partisan power.  In order to keep themselves more readily electable, Democrats maintain a porous border because they know that the great majority of those who cross our borders illegally, if and when they vote (whether in accordance with the law or not) can be expected to vote Democratic.

Just as FDR tried to stack the courts, Obama tries to stack the voter registration rolls.  Perhaps it’s a tactic he learned in Chicago, a city famous for that ploy, a city run now by his old crony Rahm Emanuel.

Naturally, if you call them on it, the Democrats won’t admit to such crass and craven partisan self-interest.  Rather, they transform your concern for the Constitution and for national security into racism.  They twist your commitment to civil defense and the rule of law into xenophobia.

Our deadliest enemies are glad for it.