THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

OUR WHOLE NATIONAL POLICY IS A VIETNAM POLICY | 2004-01-24

We have another Vietnam on the question of controlling our borders. The only place on earth where a third world country shares a border with a first world country is on the Rio Grande.

People who violate the law are either criminals or they are not. People who break into Federal facilities repeatedly are not gently led back out. They are convicted and they go to jail.

People who violate our immigration laws are either criminals or we shouldn't have immigration laws.

"But, Bob, under the Constitution, illegal immigrants have rights, too."

'Fraid not. The Constitution specifically says it applies only to "Ourselves and Our Posterity."

This was not chance wording. The Founding Fathers had just fought a war for our independence and they said our business was ourselves and foreigners were none of our business . That is what independence means.

If you do not regard the immigration law as a real law, then you should stop enforcing it completely.

We have over two million people in our prisons because we cannot decide whether to treat criminals as criminals or be human about the whole thing. This situation overlaps with our Drug War Vietnam.

If drug dealers are criminals, then we should go after them all out, wherever they are. By the same token, every court room every day has people before the judge whose occupation is crime. "He keeps getting into trouble,." they say. No one mentions what that "trouble" costs one innocent victim after another.

"But, Bob, criminals have rights, too."

I'm afraid not. The term for someone who lives outside the law in Anglo-Saxon law was "outlaw." He is outside the law.

But we do not have the courage to decide. In each case, the moral question is, "Is it worth total war or do we surrender?"

We are fighting an endless number of Vietnams because we do not have the moral courage to make the decision to fight or to surrender