A group of armed Mexicans crossed the U.S. border in Arizona Wednesday night and began firing on a Border Patrol outpost. The good news is that the outpost was manned by a contingent of National Guard soldiers that are there as part of this administration’s promise to protect our borders. The bad news is that the President’s initiative of sending U.S. troops to the border is an empty gesture, or more to the point, a deliberate charade.
You see, not only are the National Guard soldiers completely unarmed, they are not permitted to confront or have contact of any kind with people entering this country illegally. Having no way to defend themselves, our soldiers on Wednesday night were forced to run for their lives. It reminds me of the scene in the movie, Blazing Saddles, in which the townsfolk fool the bad guys with cardboard cutouts of themselves. We might as well put cardboard cutouts of National Guard soldiers on the border – it would be at least as effective at a fraction of the cost.
And now, because Bush has once again deceived the American people into thinking he is serious about protecting the borders, armed private citizens are moving on the border to protect our unarmed soldiers. Carmen Mercer of the Minuteman Project told Worldnet Daily that armed Minutman members were headed for the border to patrol “side-by-side” with National Guard troops “until the Governor or the President allow them to defend themselves…”
If that wasn’t dangerously convoluted enough, you may recall the case of U.S. Border Patrol agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos who were recently handed a prison sentence of more than a decade each for shooting at, and wounding, a Mexican drug smuggler who fled back into Mexico. The officers claimed that Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, the man who was attempting to smuggle 800 pounds of marijuana into the country, or an accomplice, fired at them. Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila claimed he did not. The U.S. Government, given the choice between the word of a dirtball smuggler and the word of their own Border Patrol agents who risked their lives to apprehend this criminal, chose to believe the smuggler.
As a result, the bad guy’s wound was nursed at a U.S. hospital, courtesy of your tax dollars, and he was sent back to Mexico with an apology for his rough treatment. And the good guys are going to jail for performing their duties while President Bush ignores calls by California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and many others to intervene on behalf of Compean and Ramos.
Just a scant decade or two ago, these events would almost certainly have caused a national uproar. Today, they’re a mere blip on the news radar screen and then they’re gone.