Why Securing Borders is Just Plain, Common Sense

Hoover Dam, one of the nation's largest and most extraordinary of its kind, rests on the Arizona/Nevada border. It's purpose, along with generating power with the flowing water current from the Colorado River, also serves to protect the Las Vegas and surrounding valley areas from imminent flooding. Should the dam break open, many homes and residents would certainly face a violent and deadly disaster the likes of many we've seen in recent years.

Let's assume for a moment you were the Operations Manager and Head Supervisor of the dam and all of its responsibilities. One day you receive a call from the closest town's Mayor, informing you of a curiously strange puddle; one that's very thin but showing up not just in parts, but around the entire city. On a hunch you go to visit the dam and, to your surprise, the colossal wall appears to have a small, barely visible crack, trickling water like a kitchen sink.

What do you do?

While the wall is incredibly vast, you could bear the cost of building a new one in front of it, but that just wouldn't prove economically viable. You could stick a piece of chewing gum in the crack or hole to patch it up, which would not only be cost effective, but would stop the slow, steady drip from transforming the town's puddle into a disaster area. Let's say for the sake of argument, you go with the gum.

Now, while the problem may be temporarily solved; of course the pressure in the wall will begin to build and, over time, the water will either increase the crack or burst a larger hole right through the wall. In the meantime, the townspeople have been and continue to hire local contractors to bring in pails and buckets to reduce the areas water depth. Siphening it out isn't an option, since it's volume isn't enough to warrant the size of the costly machines and its oversized tubes.

For quite some time, the water ebbs and flows; sometimes higher, sometimes lower, and the townspeople simply tolerate their civic roles and help out when necessary, ultimately having to call in outside contractors and pay them to assist in the restoration process.

My point in this analogy is this: What sense does it make to waste the taxpayers time, money and resources to continue to throw the water back out that's just going to continue coming right back in anyway? Why not simply fix the problem at it's source and repair the portion of the wall that needs attention; stopping the flow (and future costs) in the process?

Sounds like pure, obvious common sense, right? Then why is it called common sense only after it's been pointed out to us?

Take for example our country's illegal alien population, and apply the same rationale and logic to our Mexican/American border. We have a porous border with illegal, undocumented immigrants running rampant in a surge to get here, yet our "Homeland Security", "I.C.E." and "Border Patrol" only seem to be playing "catch and release", strangely similar to putting the water back on the other side of the dam. In doing so, the illegals are in no way deterred from their cause, and will continue, until the Will of the American people is broken, to illegaly cross the border and wreak havoc in the surrounding communities much like the water does in our example.

Without fixing the problem at its source, i.e. shutting down the border, the problem will never cease to a fully efficient stop.

Aside from the political antics of both Republicans and Democrats alike on this "special interest" issue, the problem (when viewed as such, and upon looking for a solution) indicates clearly that without a hidden agenda in mind, it is relatively easy to contain and control. Yet it continues to this day, the "flood" unnoticed (or tolerated/ disconcerned) by the masses.

Moving around the globe to our War on Terror; the same, simple logic can be applied and understood even without a military background or having read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". The basic premise to cutting off funding from surrounding state's providing of arms and insurgents appeals to the "common sense" of us to monitor and shut down the borders there to avoid (and contain) the swelling increase of suicide bombers and others with which are attempting to kill innocent people, not to mention our beloved troops. By securing the borders of the areas with which we have a vested interest in protecting, we could very well quell the violence and better "corner" the terrorists to an area where their demise would be met with more expedience (and cost-effective to the American taxpayer, too, I might add).

While there is no way to tell if our nation's top "Most Wanted" man, Osama bin Laden, is alive or dead, it must be assumed that he is alive and well after just turning 50 last week. In the absence of our Generals plans, if we had employed the simple "fix the problem at its source" philosophy and surrounded the borders and closed in from the mountaintops when he was "cornered" before his escape; we wouldn't still be in Afghanistan, or possibly Iraq for that matter, right now.

I won't pretend to have a military history background or know anything of what's actually happening on the ground there, but doesn't this seem to be a little easier to plan to anyone other than me? Though I understand this is a difficult battle and we're fighting an ideology, not a country; just as going 'door to door' for insurgents seems as reasonable as selling Amway, it's painfully clear that the matter in which we're fighting this war is wrong.

The problem is not the troops, the Generals, or the Iraqis; it's the (lack of the) Will of the American people and the incessant, narcissistic undermining of the effort by the American, ultra-liberally biased Big Media.

Though the networks (both major as well as cable) have drawn considerably favorable coverage for a "lost cause", only FoxNews seems to share the patriotic view of balancing coverage and revealing the positive aspects this war has developed through that country's democracy and industrialism. Many groups have stood up to the Giants to be heard in an effort to shake some sense into many Americans who have grown reluctant and catatonic over time due to the constant bombardment of negative news. Some papers even run a daily "death count" (See Las Vegas Sun); hardly a service to this country or its citizens (not to mention the families of the brave heroes protecting our futures).

Until our elected officials wake up and stop the finger-pointing and partisan political vie for office, we'll never be squared with the truth any more than we will a victory. The sad truth is that many prefer their blind ideology to undermine this Presidential Administration over the safety of our own countrymen; and that, my friends, is not just dangerous... it's outright treasonous.