A Thousand Here, a Thousand There

Ok, Mr. Adams, I'll bite.

What price do I put on religious tolerance? How many dead Americans am I willing to accept?

322,305,386. And counting.

Ok, yeah, I'm being glib here. Guilty as charged. But Trump's “keep 'em all out” solution is pretty much like every other “solution” to this sort of thing you see coming from DC: it won't actually do anything to solve the problem, but it doesn't inconvenience the DC crowd directly and makes the government look busy and concerned. I do completely agree with Mr. Adams when he says this bit of nonsense is likely to lift Trump rather than damage him, and I think that says a lot about what we expect to get out of DC these days.

There are just too many ways to get around this sort of thing: lying about where you came from, for instance, or sneaking into the country. I've seen parts of the Rio Grande where the “border crossing” is an old guy with a raft of lashed-together milk cartons and some 2x4s. Even Rick Perry has said a border fence between the US and Mexico is unworkable. He's mostly right. I think it could work, but it would be hideously expensive. Until we're ready to pay that price, saying we're going to keep anybody out who's really dedicated and wants to kill us is laughable.

And what about all the routes by sea into this country? We have two massive coastlines. Are we gonna put watch-stations every five miles along the coast and stop every boat that comes within a mile of shore? Remember, we're not talking about an impoverished family that's maybe scraped together US $100 to pay a coyote to smuggle them across the border. We're talking about a “two-billion dollar war machine.” Drug-smuggling submarines are only just the beginning of what these folks could do if they were serious about hitting us.

And right now, believe it or not, they're not. They've got bigger fish to fry: Iran and Assad, Putin and the House of Saud. The attacks in the west are inspired by Daesh, but they're not planned, organized, or funded by them. It's not correct to call these “lone wolf” attacks, but they're not part of a well-coordinated plan. They're the result of effective propaganda and little more.

Mr. Adams says he's willing to accept a thousand dead over ten years before he'll want to impose religious quotas on immigration. I wonder if he's being glib or simply not counting the nearly three thousand who died on 9/11? I suspect he means counting from now. Regardless, when Daesh gets serious about us, we'll be seeing death tolls in the four figures (or five or even seven) for a single day once more. In the meantime, expect to see more “solutions” like Trump's while the people we made responsible for this sort of thing concentrate on more important matters.