Letters to the Editor
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"...turning Canada into a foreign country..."
Last time I looked Canada is, in fact, a foreign country - it's not becoming one due to our border policies. The question is not whether we need to give Canada special treatment, but rather how we can become once more the kind of country that welcomes all the world to our shores the way we did when Emma Lazarus was writing her poetry ("give me your tired, your poor...")
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Islamic Fundamentalists
Although the majority of Muslims are not Wahabi extremeists, undoubtedly there are some that live in Canada, and in their fevered and twisted religious fundamentalist minds, they would love nothing more than to kill some American "Infidels" to, in their ignorance, "please Allah." I know most Muslims don't think this way, but some do, and as a result, there must be vigilence at the border. Sad but true.
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Vigilance at the border does not work
If 9/11 proved anything, it was NOT that we need increased border vigilance. After all, we have 8 - 10 million Muslims living, visiting or studying in the U.S. right now.
What it proved was that Americans need to get real even if we didn't learn our lesson. You see, what failed on 9/11 wasn't the border...it was the intelligence.
And just building walls or fences isn't going to make us more safe. We'll just have a fence or border that we end up letting the terrorist through.
What is sad that for all of this grandstanding we should be deploying human, electronic and cooperative diplomatic measures to counteract the threat. Can you imagine trying to fight the cold war the way we are trying to defeat the terrorists? We would have lost.
Have we forgotten how to win a war? Are we so wrapped up in vanity that appearance surrmounts substance? How long will this continue and go on? I am saddened to see a wall along Texas, Arizona, etc...what's next a radar zone for ships entering American waters. So what! If you knew every single person coming and going into America at every moment what would that tell you....NOT MUCH!! If you were properly using intelligence and counterintel....like Reagan did during the Cold War, we would be far better off. America collectively is suffering from PTSD. We are being irrational, short-sighted and failing to see the demise of a great country. For this, I am truly saddened.
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Canada is Not Mexico
I grew up on the border and spent my summers crossing the Peace Bridge, where customs officers, both American and Canadian, would lean into the family car and ask.."Where were you born?" Everyone had to answer, even little kids...they were listening for accents. If everyone sounded American, not foreign-born, the next and only question was, "So what are you bringing into Canada?" The answer, "nothing, officer". And then you crossed the bridge, and arrived in Canada at the midpoint of the bridge where the flags changed. Same drill on the way home.
Nobody asked for id, or driver's licenses or anything else.
With 10 or 20million or who knows how many illegal immigrants from Mexico and central America in the US, and more than a million illegals currently in prisons, convicted of felonies, it is no surprise that the southern border needs to be tightened.
But Canada is not Mexico...there is no equivalence. And yes, I agree, the states that border Canada have a great deal in common with our Canadian neighbors, much more so than with places like Texas. Hillary is not from New York, knows nothing about the state, let alone upstate which is a world removed from NYC. Typically, she equates Mexico and Canada as equql entities...this from the habitual liar who claims she opposed NAFTA. Chertoff is an incompetent hack, and Bush is dumb-ass Texan who knows nothing about Canada or indeed the northern United States. These three drill bits are poisoning what had been an enviable and beautiful friendship.
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This scares me more than terrorism
Terrorists can't do nearly as much damage to our nation as we can do to ourselves in response to the fear of terrorism. Flying has become a virtual nightmare, where we are subject to the whims of big brother and may be taken aside for the crime of having the wrong name. Our government now tracks our movement to and communication with other nations. We can be arrested and held without trial, or even charges, indefinitely. Bin ladin could not destroy this nation on 9/11, but we seem determined to do his work for him. I only wonder how long it will be before the walls keeping the terrorists out become walls keeping us in. It sounds like it's already happening.
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Do you remember the Soviet Union ?
I do. I remember that among the things we used to get down on them about was the fact that one had to carry "papers" at all times and that their citizens were not allowed to travel freely. Secret trial, domestic spying, etc. Read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn. We used to boast that our lack of "papers" and freedom to travel was proof of the superiority of the American system. It seems that we are becoming more like that which we once despised.
Also, try and remember that the 19 hijackers that pulled off Sept. 11th were not here from Canada but were legal residents from Saudi Arabia, etc. who had been vetted by INS, CIA and, I guess, NSA. Take a long, hard look at the American/Canadian border. 8,850 km (5,500 miles) of mostly empty land. It's almost 3 times longer than the Mexican border. Care to guess what it would cost to put a fence along the border through the Rocky Mountains or the Bitterroot or the Boundary Waters ?
And while you are thinking about it, consider what this will do to economic activity along the border. Canada is our number one trading partner. The trade across Ambassador Bridge between Windsor Ontario, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan alone is equal to all the trade between the United States and Japan.
Only 263 days until we are rid of the criminal Bush regime then we can go back to acting like the advanced first world country we used to be.