Orange Alerts and Other Ineffectual Measures

I suppose everyone now knows about the tradgey in London.

I'm not going to go into detail about this one, because we all have our own sources and unless one has been in a hole for the last day or so, knows what happened.

Briefly, "At least 37 people have been killed and 700 injured in a series of terror attacks on London."

I glanced at this story this morning when I awoke making a mental note to check into it more thoroughly later. I came back from my morning classes and grabbed a bowl of cereal and parked myself in front of the television. I usually avoid television like the plague, but it proved to be informative.

I caught the beginning of some fellow from the Department of Homeland Security telling everyone what we knew he would. He raised the terror alert on trains and such to orange. I don't have the exact quote because I frankly don't care what color the alert is. Partially, it's because I live in Houghton, but it's also because we are so bad at trying to fight terrorism.

First, if the terrorists were going to hit us, they're not going to give us time to raise our alert. I see all these bumber stickers that tell me never to forget. Forget what? That by the time we knew what happened it was too late? I remember that. I keep forgetting though what colors have to do with fighting terrorism.

Second, if the terrorists are going to hit us several hours or days later--which they won't but if they did--they wouldn't hit the thing that we're watching. Bush and company are caught in a game of capture the flag where we keep guarding where our flag used to be. The terrorists may be fools and cowards, but it wouldn't take much more than the IQ of a food processor to out-think our national defense team. No offense to the intelligent people involved, but could you try a little harder maybe?

We will get hit again by terrorist. Iraq will not change this in the least. The nature of our enemey is such that they will use terrorism again and the nature of our society is such that we will again fail to prevent it.

Many people, such as myself, offer criticisms about our war and terror, especially liberals. For those who have problems with what we are doing, what would you do better? Prove that Republican rhetoric on this point is shallow, and give me some ideas.

The way I see it, we can do one of two things. First, we could allow Bush to become a tyrant. Eliminating civil liberities may actually save us from terrorism. Still, I just don't think it's worth the cost.

Secondly, we could return to an isolationist foreign policy. We could wrap things up in Iraq and then start to bring troops home from around the globe. One reason that the terroists hate us--no it's not our freedom--is that we do stick our nose into other people's business quite often. Pulling out of the Middle East isn't going to get Osama to sing our praises, but it might assuage just a little bit of the animosity they have towards us.

This is the policy I support. In addition, the troops we have recalled can be placed at our borders and at our nations ports. This will not eliminate illegal immigration, but it will curtail it. Furthermore, I would like to see an Operation Wetback II. The first one undertaken by Eisenhower and we are in much need of another one. We don't need to toss our every illegal, but the ones with felonies can find a new place to live I think. Furthermore, we can either give amnesty and citizenship to the productive ones, making them full members of society with all the priveledges that entails, or find alternative residences for those who only leech off the system.

Then we can have a debate about our nation's immigration policy and try to allow in as many immigrants as our economy will support. Also, we should be able to scrap that dreaded Patriot Act. This plan is not perfect of course, but I see that it has more benefits than drawbacks. We may get hit again, but we can try to prepare without taking away civil liberties and resorting to different color schemes that are completetely ineffectual.

Don't like my idea? Fine. Let's hear yours. I'll be waiting.