COIN in America
Sec of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, says that our southern border is as safe as it’s ever been. (I guess not much.) She also says that we should gauge the success along the border by looking at the “the numbers.” There is less violence on the American side of the border; there are more seizures of drugs, guns, and bad guys.
This is the same argument being used in Afghanistan and which is under fire from skeptics around the world. We are probably measuring the wrong things. Pick some new metrics, folks. It doesn’t matter if you are seizing a million more tons of weed each year as it tries to cross the border if there is an aggregate 15 more million tons crossing each year. To equate it to the little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dam is a farce. It’s more like the oil gushing out of that hole in the Gulf. I’m sure you’ve heard of it by now.
What Madame Napolitano is saying is that we are conducting a counterinsurgency war along our own border. I think that it’s likely to have the same “success” as the one in Afghanistan.
Folks, we went about this the wrong way. I was one of those patriotic basterds (intentional misspelling) who eagerly ran into Iraq in early 2003 to quell the evil Saddam, but looking back (hello, Monday-Morning Quarterback) I can see that we needed to secure our own borders before reaching out. Let’s set it against a more medieval backdrop. If an invading horde destroys a tower in your castle but leaves (or dies) before being able to inflict more damage, your first inclination as a ruler is not to go attack the enemy, it’s to rebuild the tower and reinforce your defenses. Only after you’ve reinforced your defenses (build a wall, dig a moat, get a few dozen pit bulls), do you strike out at the enemy, especially one for which you have little intel and even less understanding of their culture.
So, we should’ve built the wall along Mexico and at least strung some chicken-wire along the Canadian border. Then we should’ve taken all those road “workers” standing around while you drive past to dig the moat. Then we should’ve co-opted every thug in the inner-city for the use of their pit bulls. At that point (and only at that point) should we have struck out at the enemy on their own lands.
Posted on June 24th, 2010 by TheAdamBomb
Filed under: Uncategorized
Leave a Reply