The Culture Beat

As you’ve probably heard, the president is expected to announce tonight that he intends “to send thousands of National Guard troops to help seal the nation’s southern border against illegal immigrants.” To that end, he spent most of today trying to assuring Mexican president Vincente Fox Quesada that he

“considers Mexico a friend and that what is being considered is not militarization of the border but support of Border Patrol capabilities on a temporary basis by National Guard personnel . . .”

Yeah, right.

I’ll get straight to the point: this is a terrible idea. If there were a Hall of Fame for Terrible Ideas, this would get in on the first ballot. Unanimously.

Why? At least three reasons:

It’s unnecessary. As Luis Alberto Urrea chronicled in “The Devil’s Highway,” the U.S.-Mexico border is, in a sense, already militarized. That is, it’s already patroled by men with guns : the Border Patrol, local, state and tribal (Tohono O’Odham) police and even a Marine base. The idea that “National Guard personnel,” i.e., troops, are needed to support “Border Patrol capabilities on a temporary basis” is risible. What’s needed are more Border Patrol officers.

It’s insufficient. At least politically-speaking. If the president and Karl Rove think that dispatching “National Guard personnel” to the border would satisfy the Tom Tancredo/Michelle Malkin part of the “base,” they should be required to submit a urine sample. Just last week, a part of this wing (that sound you hear is my back snapping in two as I bend over backwards to be fair) debated whether the president should be impeached for “his failure to stop the ‘Mexican invasion’ and protect our nation’s borders.” I somehow doubt that folks who call what’s happening an “invasion” will be satisfied with the president’s proposed actions. In fact, Malkin has already called the as-of-yet-undelivered address part of a “homeland security dog-and-pony charade.”

It’s dangerous. As Urrea tells us, patroling the U.S.-Mexico border requires more than showing up with a bunch of guns and other hardware: it requires an intimate knowledge of both the unforgiving terrain and the people coming across the border. The desert can and will kill you, as it does hundreds of would-be immigrants every year. The Arizona desert is such an efficient killer than, as one agent told Urrea, he isn’t that worried about any would-be terrorist entering the country that way. As he put it, they may be from “desert countries but they’re not from this desert.”

In this setting, it’s hard to imagine what sending National Guardsmen from, say, Iowa, Arkansas or New Jersey will accomplish. Actually, there is one thing I can imagine: a picture of an American soldier pointing a rifle at an unarmed Mexican national. Better yet — if you’re Reuters — a Mexican woman; make her pregnant. And if one of them happens to shoot said unarmed civilian, well, if you think they hate us now, just wait.

Being from Texas, the president cannot not know any of this. But, as Professor Stephen Bainbridge reminds us, the president has “zero political capital,” so instead of “rational” and “humane” approaches to the problem, we’ll more likely get M16A2s pointed out at civilians armed with water bottles and tortillas.