The Minuteman Project and priorities

The month of April has marked the first effort of The Minuteman Project. The project has been a civilian volunteer undertaking to call attention to and try to do something about illegal immigration. The project consists of civilians establishing observation posts along the Mexico-Arizona border in an effort to stop illegal border crossings. The Minuteman Project has been all over the news this month, so if you want more info, just do a web search on "The Minuteman Project."

I am not going to undertake any analysis of the pros and cons of the project, nor I am going to get into the issue of illegal immigration in detail. This post will point out an issue that goes beyond illegal immigration and The Minuteman Project.

An April 1 segment on PRI's "The World" contained comments from Cindy Kolb, who lives near the border. She described some of her experiences and then said the following:

I think that our government has failed us–that we do not have homeland security. There is no homeland security. If you and I can be out here and see fresh foot tracks and food and water and backpacks, who are these people, and how did they get into our country, especially after 9-11?

The broader issue I speak of was fleshed out even more in an April 20 program on BBC radio. As I have noted elsewhere, the BBC does not archive its radio programs, but rather keeps about one week's worth of programs on its website. This is the link for this particular program (entitled "Stopping Mexican Migrants"), but it might not be available after tomorrow. One of the people interviewed was Tim Donnelly, who voted for Bush but said the following:

The President has abandoned these U.S. citizens. He’s abandoned them! They’ve got drug dealers running through their backyards who will kill them if they happen to pop their head out. I mean, what the hell are we going to Iraq for? And hey, I’m not against going to Iraq, okay? I absolutely support those troops, but--my God--American citizens being terrorized in their own backyards, and it is tolerated. If I sound passionate and upset, I think I represent a lot of people here.

(emphasis added). Here is a man who voted for Bush, is not anti-war, and supports the troops. In other words, he seems to be a loyal Republican. Yet he wants to know why we invaded Iraq instead of truly protect our homeland. It is a damn good question. Remember that the primary reason given for the war was to make America safer. We know Iraq had no WMD or viable (to put it mildly) WMD programs--AND, as I have explained in numerous posts, we pretty much knew that before the war and could have definitively known that if the weapons inspections had continued. Just think how things might be if we had spent just a portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we spent on Iraq and applied them to actually securing the homeland. The fiscal reality is that we do not have the money to spend on real homeland security, and we won't for years to come because of Iraq.

I feel safer...how about you?