Will 6,000 Troops Ever Be Sent to the Border?
by James Buchanan
One of the few things absolutely certain in the political world is George Bush’s devotion to a guest worker-amnesty program for illegal aliens. It was a strange day recently when Bush announced that he wanted 6,000 National Guard troops on the border. In the same speech Bush (again) mentioned his (much hated) guest worker program. Anyone with any political common sense knows that Bush is desperately trying to avoid a GOP disaster during the November election. The Iraq War is an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party. The Abramoff bribery scandal has also done some damage and Bush himself has an abysmal 29 approval rating. Clearly a populist issue needs to be exploited! If the Democrats take over the House (and possibly the Senate) then an impeachment of George Bush is a very real possibility. The Democrats want revenge for the Clinton impeachment, and a lame duck is a very easy political target.
Shortly after Bush’s speech, a barrage of questions came from all political directions. One theory was that Bush deliberately picked the one branch of the military that was the most over-extended and over-worked. 75 percent of National Guard equipment is in Iraq right now. Perhaps Bush and all the “open borders” country club Republicans knew that the Guard would be tired and poorly-equipped. The National Guard is supposed to do one weekend of service per month and then a week or two of service during the summer. The people serving in the Guard have civilian jobs (or they HAD civilian jobs before Bush and Rumsfeld sent them to Iraq for multiple tours).
The governors of the border states are sympathetic to the members of the Guard and don’t want to treat them as military slaves. Besides the border problem should be a federal matter. The federal government should be building a wall and increasing the size of the Border Patrol by tenfold. The individual states should not have to pay for yet another federally-mandated task.
Only about 1300 National Guard troops from California and Arizona will be deploying to the border anytime soon. A recent news article reports that Governor Schwarzenegger has made a deal with Bush forcing the federal government to pay for the troop deployment. California could have 1,000 National Guard troops on the border by July 15th. Arizona has so far offered 300 troops. The troops can carry guns but cannot handle detainees.
Curiously, the most important task of catching and detaining illegal aliens won’t be done by these troops. So what will they be doing? Counting the illegal alien crossings? There was talk of taking away the weapons from the National Guard troops –perhaps so that the drug smugglers could gun down any of them who got in their way. Hopefully, public pressure will allow the Guard troops to catch and arrest illegal aliens so that the troop deployment isn’t a total waste of time and money.
Thankfully, the will of the people has triumphed –even it’s only a partial victory. US troops will finally be sent to the Mexican border. Most patriotic Americans, who called for sending troops to the border years ago, meant active duty troops such as the Marines and the 82nd Airborne, not part time soldiers such as the Guard. But this is still a milestone event in American political history. The politicians in Washington, D.C. have been forced by the will of the people to do something. Hopefully we can start forcing these political scoundrels to do a lot more, including a massive deportation of the millions of illegals already here.