OPINION:
In what used to be called Iraq, the unmistakable sign that a sovereign state has dissolved into three warring tribal factions is that Baghdad no longer controls its own borders.
Despite posturing by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and dispatching 300 special forces “advisers” on a futile rear-guard mission, new facts now exist in the far-off sands of the Middle East. Put simply: All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can never put the Humpty-Dumpty Kingdom of Iraq back together again. No matter how passionately proclaimed by pundits and presidents, wishful thinking must eventually give way to hard facts on the ground.
The same is true of other sands much closer to home, those along the fabled shores of the Rio Grande. What is happening in South Texas — just over a hundred miles from where these words are written — is that our southwestern border is being overrun. Owing to the studied inattention of the liberal media, you might not have known that the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has long engaged in a no-holds-barred campaign of airmobile and riverine warfare campaign against the Mexican drug cartels.
The cartels are a latter-day credit to Adam Smith, an aggressive, vertically integrated service organization dedicated to supplying “product” to their loyal customers in every American city — like Wal-Mart, only better organized and viscerally intolerant of failure. On the other side is the Texas Department of Public Safety, an equally determined, paramilitary force struggling to hold the line against a wily, wealthier adversary. Several years ago, I listened with rapt fascination as the chief of the Texas Rangers described an engagement in which his troops had fired 3,000 rounds of ammunition against the cartels. Why so many? “Because, dag-nabbit, we didn’t have 5,000 rounds.”
That was all before a simmering, low-intensity conflict turned into a full-fledged invasion. Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution states that the United States has a specific responsibility to every “State in the Union … [to] protect each of them against Invasion.” With good reason, the Founders probably contemplated the Redcoats coming back to burn Washington and besiege American cities — as they actually did during the War of 1812.
How about now, when the invading armies overrunning the Texas and Arizona borders are not Redcoats but “unaccompanied alien children” arriving every day by the thousands? In the first six months of 2014, more than 21,000 of these children turned themselves in to authorities in the Rio Grande Valley sector alone, four times the total for all of 2011. Instead of apprehending bad guys, battle-hardened Texas DPS officers and overworked Border Patrol agents are now preoccupied with new missions. They are changing diapers, arranging deliveries of baby formula and shepherding the newly arrived alien children to “refugee resettlement shelters” deep in the American interior — the foreordained destiny for this rising generation of future Democratic voters.
The new arrivals have exploded the once-familiar distinction of “Other Than Mexican,” trekking 1,800 miles through Mexico from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. DPS officials worry that narco-traffickers and Hezbollah terrorists may slip undetected through the now wide-open door. Texas officials place the blame for the influx squarely on the so-called Department of Homeland Security, where “prosecutorial discretion directives” and other Obama administration policy choices have sent an unmistakable signal. Every potential immigrant now understands that, if you can get here, the border fence is down. Once you’re here, we won’t throw you out.
Until quite recently, it was not that way at all. In February, a close family friend from Mexico invited us to his naturalization ceremony, held in San Antonio’s Institute of Texan Cultures. Among exhibits honoring Texas pioneers of every conceivable ethnicity, the standing-room-only crowd stood while an honor roll was read. As the names of more than 30 countries were read, two or three of their emigrants stood proudly. Then the master of ceremonies read the last country: “And finally, Mexico.” The remaining half of the audience stood amid a roar of applause, laughter and cheers of “Viva Mexico.”
After taking the oath of allegiance, the new citizens lined up to receive their certificates, voting cards and pictures taken with the presiding judge. Each had endured a demanding process taking time, money and effort, designed to underline the timeless lesson that neither freedom nor American citizenship is free.
Speaking of those voting cards: The overriding task this fall is to elect a Republican majority that will impeach President Obama and his henchmen for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that have progressively undermined our borders, and thereby, compromised American security and our identity as a nation of immigrants, which intends to remain fully sovereign.
Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel, is a military analyst and author on national security issues.
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