Written by Robert Bridge; Originally appeared on strategic-culture.org
The US government has constructed at tremendous cost to its taxpayers some of the most impressive structures – both architectural and organizational – of all time. Yet somehow it has failed to build a viable wall on the Mexican border.
In 1931, during the Great Depression, the US government began construction of the Hoover Dam, one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects ever attempted. Employing thousands of US laborers, some 100 of whom reportedly lost their lives in the course of the project, the dam is mind-boggling due its sheer size, rivaling that of the pyramids.
At 726 feet tall, the wedge-shaped structure is 660 ft (200 m) thick at its base, narrowing to 45 ft (14 m) at the top, which provides enough room to accommodate a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona. The project required millions of cubic feet of concrete – said to be enough to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York – and tens of millions of pounds of steel.
Many decades later, the US government undertook another extensive project known as the US Embassy in Baghdad. Although rarely discussed in the US media, this 104-acre slice of American property in a foreign country is so immense that it rivals Vatican City in terms of size [the Vatican is an independent city-state, complete with its own euro-based currency and security detail, located inside of Rome].
Officially opened in 2009, the $750 million embassy, which is situated in Baghdad’s so-called Green Zone, is by far the most expansive and expensive embassy in the world. Why does a foreign nation need a footprint the size of a small country to house a few thousand diplomats and private contractors? That is a very good question, but one that was never really pursued by legislators when Congress approved plans in 2005 for the mega structure under the Bush administration.
To this day, much of the complex remains under heavy wraps due to “security concerns.” Yet this behemoth cash cow continues to suck money dry from government coffers; in 2012, just several years after its construction was finished, the Obama administration requested and got more than $100 million for a “massive” upgrade to the compound.
Speaking of Iraq, which suffered military conquest at the hands of US-led forces starting in 2003, the United States also managed to find ways to construct some 900+ military bases around the world. Needless to say, this is no cheap venture, and helps to explain why the US military budget is approaching $1 trillion dollars annually – more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan combined.
In light of these monumental projects, it goes without saying that the United States certainly possesses the technical prowess and the financial wherewithal to perform the simple task of building a wall, and more specifically, a wall on the Mexican border. Yet thus far, and despite the fact that Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail that would be his first task in office, the wall remains – a bit like Barack Obama’s past promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay detention center – a pipe dream.
How did we Americans arrive at a place where such a fundamental element of nationhood – that is, the ability to control our borders from any and all outside illegal intruders – is considered a radical concept? Since when did the universally accepted idea of a strong national border become an issue for debate and contention among our legislators? Since when have weak, porous borders become a desired state of affairs for a global superpower, and especially one that has a habit of attacking sovereign states? Part of the answer seems to lie within the present atmosphere of political correctness and identity politics that has conflated the need for a strong border with racism and even white supremacist ideology. More on that in a moment.
Just this week, part of the South American ‘caravan’ that the US mainstream media had called a “myth” has turned up on America’s doorstep in the Mexican town of Tijuana. Images show dozens of young men straddling the top of the border fence with none of the US troops that Trump activated in sight. Now, if the US Democrats had their way, these thousands of illegal aliens would be awarded amnesty and shepherded into ‘sanctuary cities’ where these individuals would slip undetected into the fabric of American society. And for those – including the US president – who voice opposition to this invasion, they are casually branded as racist or a white supremacist. However, the real motivation for the Democrats behind such ad hominem attacks is raw political opportunism.
The Democrats are actually building part of their platform on awarding asylum to illegals, and despite the fact that many of these people are not suffering political repression back home. In fact, most of these people just want to improve their financial well-being. In other words, the great majority of these new arrivals – as was established by on-the-ground interviews – are economic migrants.
And who can blame anyone for wanting a better life? After all, it was the incentive of economic opportunity that first brought millions of migrants to America in the first place. However, the difference between the migrants from past generations and many of those arriving today is that the former went through a lengthy legal process for entering the country. Today, it’s even worse than just a matter of legality; it’s a matter of criminality on multiple fronts.
What the US mainstream media fails to inform the American public is that the overwhelming majority of people from this so-called ‘caravan’ are young, male and oftentimes dangerous. This much was confirmed by Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, one of the only Western journalists to actually travel to South America and report on the march of migrants firsthand. In addition to reporting that, in his estimation, some 98 percent of the migrants were young and male, he added that some of them bore tattoos that identified them as members of the notorious MS13 international crime gang. To get a better understanding of this caravan and the true makeup of its participants I would encourage the reader to watch Farrell’s interview in its entirety.
Now this leads us to the question of constructing a wall on the US-Mexico border. To date, those efforts have gone fizzled. In March, Congress passed its trillion-dollar spending bill; glaringly missing from the numerous pages was funding for construction of Trump’s wall. Instead, $1.6 billion was put aside for “border security,” as well as replacing parts of the existing fence. In other words, nothing that will prevent illegals from entering the United States.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said this week that the Trump White House has one last chance – with a lame duck Republican Congress still in place – to secure funding for the US-Mexican border wall.
“We should be focused on that one main thing over the next several weeks as we still have a few weeks left while Republicans control all of government,” Jordan said in an interview.
Time is ticking like a bomb for the American people to restore control over its southern border, and there is no good excuse for not completing this monumental project. Americans should not be cowered by accusations of ‘racism,’ when the country itself has been founded on the blood, sweat and tears of migrants throughout history. Much of the so-called racism that exists in America is a figment of the media’s hyperactive imagination. Nor should the expense of the project – considering the price tag for so many other US adventures and misadventures, up to and including wars abroad – be a reason for preventing it.
The overall cost of failing to protect America’s border will far excel the total price of a wall if action is not taken now. It’s time for America to act like a real nation – a superpower with a backbone – and protect its border.
Trump’s done some positive things, but he’s also been a big disappointment on a number of issues. Israel, Iran, mass shootings, sanctions, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and to all of that you can add the border wall.
USA makes their Presidents for their own inhabitants.
In the countries You mention I see no hard work for anything better. Those should clean their own houses. Its typical for them, that You by Your own madness not are able to share power as democrasy do and by that get a more complicated but also much better Governess.
I just have stopped at Live ua map, where You write too. I only see babling nonsense about almost everything, where the highest level is – everybody else arfe the bad ones.
I see more then half – maybee 3/4 is only Yours. When I write that, its I am western, USA, Zionist, Kurd, jew, propganda, terrorists and whatever. The jews even run all in the world.
So why does it matter, if You are runned by russians and chinese instead, when You never change. A good thing might be, You dont blame us.
Methinks the biggest problem why its so hard is that 900+ foreign military bases fall under the defense department and foreign policy in particular, a field in which a US president has basically carte blanche to do the fuck whatever he wants. Launch a cruise missile strike on a foreign nation? No problemo!
Whereas the Wall is an internal affair. Just like universal health care. And for that he needs Congress. And even a president with a majority of his own party controlling Congress quickly learns that that means little as each member of the House and Senate is in the first place beholden to his constituency first, second and third, and the president only last. They will also sell their votes dearly so to get the most out of each bill for their own constituency. And by constituency I mean both his voters back home and even more important the big campaign donors that financed his election.
This is puzzling to understand to Europeans, used to parties where they vote for a party directly, usually the party leader and the rest of his MP’s enter a parliament as faceless nobodies based on his success. But in the US each member of Congress gets elected on his own merit and program. And they can be radically different even if the president is from the same party. A great system in theory compared to the faceless apparatchniks that inhabit Europe’s parliaments, but in practice it creates additional gridlock above the already massive gridlock that exists as each party that doesn’t have its candidate become president hate the other other guy with a fiery passion bordering upon death. And which seems to get worse with every presidential election.
Yes, You are correct for the differences between USA and EU. EU started with only 3 countries, where the rest of us a little by little has joined.
By that we started having our own constituions alread or as several countries liberated from USSR restarted from the collapse having no usefull left and therefore fx used European Human Rights as well as homogenizing European structures as a start(capitaism/liberalism) in stead of Egells Economics.
By that we compared to USA has a very weak upper structure and so be it. Sometimes I wish we had, but mainly I am for EU should decide more but in less sectors, because we are very different.
Some forget the importance of we made WW1 and WW2 ourselves and its important not to do that – as a minimum at each other(!). Even most are in Nato, we therefore prefare spending a lot of money by making at least not war but devellopment for own and others in stead.
So being military relative weak is a chois. We try something else even we only have limited sucesses.
Thing is, what do we need a strong military for? To defend Europe? Or to play Sancho Pancha to Trump Quixotte’s crazy international windmill scheme of the week? Each job requires different force organization and equipment.
We are not You.
Seemes You prefare Russia in WW1 as well as WW2 took more colonies and should be allowed to do that again.
Of course that includes millions of muslims from Crimera over Caucasus and all the way to Vladivostok.
Thats what we dont like and by that help Eastern Europe some. Russiana has been the agressive ones. Even most idiots can see that on maps.
Russia free many states after world war one, russian empire disintegrade and states had been born like ukraine and the baltic states, in post ww1 many nation joined the ussr, they where just like the EU of today
No, Those states were freed because Russia ny good reasons lost WW1 3 times.
If the Tzars would not have collapsed, Istanbul was a part of Ryssia too.
You are more upside down about in then people in New Zealand. Russia freed none.
Like USSR hahahahahahahaha. Which ones votes for it then ??
Do you know what is petro dollar and how and why it came into existence?
That’s America’s thing. Since there is no petro Euro I see no reason to create an EU military that has to copy the US armed forces to bomb brown countries into submission and invade them. Nor to be their Sancho Pancha. To defend Europe from invasion we don’t need aircraft carriers, troop transports and overseas bases.
But dont all funds come from the Department of Defence ?.
Yes, but the army goes where the president says they go. Therefore foreign policy.
More like why. Mexicans and south of there are civilians but also to much crime both ways.
USA has not lost control as such there. But today it for the time beings has reached a too high level. Its partly the same for Europe and fx Australia. We like joiners, when we need them.
The big problems mainly are, when we already have a high low educated unimployment as well we only neeed temporary incommers. Thas minimum demand from us: The netto should be plus.
Back in the eighties I read an article in Time magazine titled “Reconquista” about rising population of Latin -America immigrants in the USA. by that article in some parts of LA were signs on shops “We speak English”… Anyway, despite the headline I didn’t felt the text was expression of fear and in decades to follow I didn’t read any disturbing news about it. Now I am quite surprised that The USA is afraid of few thousands of immigrants when the number of illegal immigrants is measured in millions.
Bs. Everything from US happens because of money. If the wall is not build, its because the trail between Mexico and USA of drugs and criminal escape activities will loose money and therefore cant be interrupted.