James Fulford
Searching On My Own Name...
I found that I still had this blog. I spend so much time saying things elsewhere that I don't really need to say things here, but I just wanted to update it to see if it worked.
My, how time flies. I'm just signing into Blogger to publish a comment somewhere, and I find that I still have this blog. But any actual blogging I do
happens here.
An American foreign legion
An American foreign legion
Joshua Paul
Now deployed in more than 150 countries around the globe, U.S. forces are stretched to their very limits. The American military is postured to deter a threat in Korea, to fight a major war in Southwest Asia, to counter narcotics in South America, to fight terrorism in Central and Southeast Asia, and to keep the peace in the Balkans, the Sinai and elsewhere. In addition to these commitments, the aftermath of the war in Iraq could see the need for hundreds of thousands of U.S. peacekeepers to remain in the region, according to Gen. Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the Army.
The strain is showing. Not only are a number of personnel being "stop-gapped" — or prevented from leaving the military — but some retirees are being recalled to active service. In the worst position are the tens of thousands of reservists being called away from their families and jobs to active duty expected to last for a year or more.
A number of proposals have been suggested to counter this strain. Rep. Charles Rangel ignited debate when he proposed the reinstitution of the draft. But, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was quick to point out, this may not be the optimal solution. Today's military relies on highly trained and highly committed individuals rather than on sheer numbers.
Other members of Congress have suggested allowing limited increases to the personnel endstrength of the Services. But this, too, puts a large financial strain on the Service budgets, and also risks quality to provide quantity.
Indeed, the military itself is hardly in a position to grow. Burgeoning budgets caused by the so-called "bow-wave" of transformation are causing the military to look at cutting, rather than increasing, end-strength. Massive research and development funding for projects like the F22 or F35 fighter aircraft, or the Army's Future Combat Systems, which will be followed within this decade by even greater procurement costs, are causing the services to see what trade-offs they can make in terms of current capabilities to fund these advances within the zero-sum defense budget. And short of delaying these projects or letting current equipment decay, cutting end-strength is one of the few options that could really provide sufficient funding.
Another answer posed has been to recall American troops from places not critical to national security — from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, for example. In fact, aside from the cost to personnel, the United States spends an inordinate amount of money on peacekeeping — close to $30 billion between 1996-2001, according to the GAO. This option, while not without attraction, withdraws our nation from key areas of the world at a time when stability operations may be critical. We cannot afford to disengage. But, we cannot afford to remain so widely engaged. How can America resolve this dilemma?
Oddly enough, the answer may come from France. The respected French Foreign Legion, founded in 1831 and still in existence, has proved its worth in numerous fights from the battlefields of Belgium to the jungles of Indochina. Is it time to consider an American foreign corps?
There would be numerous advantages to this approach. Like its French counterpart, the corps could open its membership to foreign personnel with the offer of comparatively decent pay and, after five years of service, American citizenship, and could ensure they are ingrained with the morals of our nation before they are sent abroad. Unlike the French Foreign Legion, though, which is now consumed within the regular French army, this corps could take up the task most disliked by the U.S. military, that of peacekeeping.
Peacekeeping, though a critical mission, does not require the expensive fighter aircraft and heavy armor that warfighting does. Nor does it require the costly communications equipment required to network these weapons. To provide an American soldier to a peacekeeping mission costs, on average, $220,000 per year. A foreign corpsman on a cheaper payscale, whose training and equipping is focused solely on the peacekeeping mission, may cost significantly less.
Crucially, this would also take the pressure off the reserve components. Long deployments to the Balkans have a poor effect on the morale of units so deployed. A corps of volunteer foreign professionals, unattached to families back in America, would be more willing to accept the mission, and possibly even find more value in it than America's military, which is postured for war.
Finally, a foreign military corps would be deployable for lengthy periods of time to areas, like the Balkans, that are peripheral to U.S. security concerns. There would be far less pressure on Congress to bring home these boys.
A well-monitored, cheaply equipped, American foreign corps may provide a viable alternative to the United States to relieve the strain on military end-strength while still allowing America to ensure stability wherever necessary.
• Joshua Paul is an associate at James Benevuto & Associates Inc., and he works closely with the U.S. Army Force Development Directorate. Any views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of JB&A or the Army.
Coalition Says It Will Fight Local Pursuit of Immigrants
DOMESTIC SECURITY
Coalition Says It Will Fight Local Pursuit of Immigrants
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
ASHINGTON, April 13 — A coalition of immigration advocacy groups is challenging the Justice Department's decision to allow state and local police departments to pursue illegal immigrants as part of the war on terror.
Taking on a job traditionally done by federal agents, a small number of police departments has begun arresting people accused of civil violations of immigration law, like overstaying visas, since the Justice Department announced its new interpretation of existing laws last year, officials say.
Officials say the change was necessary to provide assistance to federal immigration officers and to remove criminals and potential terrorists from the streets. But the Justice Department has refused to release the documents on which it based its decision to advocacy groups, who say the decision violates the law and undermines confidence in local law enforcement.
Police chiefs in states including Texas, California, Florida and Colorado have warned that allowing local officials to make immigration arrests would jeopardize relations with immigrants, who might be less willing to report crimes. On Monday, a coalition of immigrant groups plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in New York to force the Justice Department to turn over its records.
"There are serious legal questions about this," said Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, one of seven advocacy groups suing the government. "But it is difficult to raise those concerns in a meaningful way if you can't hold up the policy and describe what it is."
Jorge Martinez, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said he did not know the details of the advocacy groups' efforts to obtain the records. Mr. Martinez said the new policy was intended to protect public safety and emphasized that local police chiefs who disagreed with the Justice Department were not obliged to participate.
"We're concentrating on arresting aliens who have violated criminal provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act or civil provisions that render an alien deportable," he said. "That's the narrow scope."
The Justice Department's decision to revisit the issue caused an outcry last year when it first became public.
In 1996, the Justice Department's legal counsel decided that local police officers were precluded from tracking and arresting illegal immigrants. Such matters were to be handled by federal immigration officials. That decision was reiterated in a memorandum in November 2001.
White House officials expressed concern last year when the Justice Department started to revive the issue. But by June, the Justice Department came up with a policy that appeared to be acceptable to the Bush administration.
In a letter to the National Immigration Forum last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft said his legal counsel had determined that immigrants who were deportable under immigration law and posed threats to national security could be arrested by local law enforcement.
Mr. Ashcroft said the names of such immigrants were being entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's database.
Timothy Danahey, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, praised Mr. Ashcroft's decision.
"Immigration law enforcement has been overlooked, and the approximately 2,000 I.N.S. special agents assigned to interior enforcement matters is not adequate," he said last week in a Congressional hearing.
But many advocates for immigrants wonder why the government has refused to release documents describing the policy.
"There is no justification for secret lawmaking," said Lucas Guttentag, a senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the advocacy groups.
Mark Steyn highlights these two items today:
NINE MONTHS LATER
"July 4 Shooting At LAX Ruled Terrorism"
The Department of Justice, April 12th 2003
and
Fancy that!
Steyn, July 8th 2002
I'm a dead white male, as you can tell from the above picture. Suppose on Martin Luther King Day I went to the offices of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and shot the receptionists. How many nano-seconds do you think it would take before the attack was being characterized as racially motivated? Your top Olympic hotshot could ingest every steroid on the planet and he couldn't beat that time.
Suppose it was Judy Garland's birthday and I went to my local gay bathhouse and opened fire on the fetching young men handing out the towels. How many minutes would tick by before the word "homophobia" was heard?
Or suppose it was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and me and my semi-automatic swung by the abortion clinic ...
Well, you get the idea. On the Fourth of July (hint) a guy went to the airport in Los Angeles, sauntered up to the ticket counter of El Al (hint) and fatally shot two people and wounded three. How many folks hearing the news on a quickie radio update honestly expected it to be anyone other than a Muslim male of Middle Eastern origin? Obviously, Underperformin' Norman Mineta, the scrupulously sensitivity-trained U.S. Transportation Secretary, would have been wary of jumping to conclusions. Were he running the LAPD, he'd have pulled in a couple of elderly nuns and Kelli-Sue, a trainee hairdresser from Des Moines.
In the spirit of self-promotion, I should mention that I wrote a
piece about the LAX shooter on vdare.com, myself, saying
"The FBI can't figure out whether he was a terrorist or not. They've suffered from denial for some time.".
The NYT has a piece on the power wielded by the Mexican Consul in Los Angeles.
Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles Exudes Power and Energy
For me the "money quote" was
On Thursday, one of Ms. Lara's aides was at the county jail, visiting some of the estimated 4,500 Mexican inmates there.
The
New York Times never stops to ask why there are 4,500 Mexicans in jail in Los Angeles. These guys are displacing hardworking native-born criminals.But not all of Los Angeles' Mexican criminals are in jail; some of them are back in Mexico, scot-free. See Joe Guzzardi's latest:
Los Angeles – Baghdad West?
“It tears me up,” Morales continued, “to know that my son’s killer is living without a care in Mexico.”.
If you read
vdare.com, you may have noticed that I occasionally write collections of short items with titles like
- I Keep Saying We Should Have A Blog… We Definitely Should Have A Blog!,
11/13/02 - I Still Think We Should Have A Blog…, and finally
Blog! Blog!, and even more finally
- Not A Blog.
This is a blog. Long may it wave.
