A Simple Government Read online

  Secure the Borders

  In 2006, Congress voted to build a fence along our border with Mexico, and even though President George W. Bush began work on it before he left office, President Obama halted that work in 2010. We must finish the fence. With apologies to Kevin Costner, if we build it, they won’t come.

  In May 2010, President Obama agreed to send up to 1,200 National Guard forces for a year to support our border patrol. This was nowhere near enough, and their mission should not have been limited to a year. Under President Bush’s “Operation Jump Start,” we had six thousand National Guard at the border, which is what Governor Brewer asked President Obama for.

  But securing our border is a broader concept than simply preventing people from crossing. It includes discouraging people from approaching the border in the first place. Illegals must view our border not as an obstacle to overcome but as a dead end with no opportunity for them on the other side. So securing our border means securing our workplaces. Illegals are doing many of our jobs only because the federal government isn’t doing its job.

  If illegals can’t find work, those who are here will leave, and those who would consider coming will stay home. We must enforce the law, and we must go after employers with hefty fines and prison time for repeat offenders. As one attorney who represents illegal immigrants said, “It’s like our border has two signs: ‘Keep Out’ and ‘Help Wanted.’” We can’t have it both ways.

  In November 2009, President Obama rescinded President George H. W. Bush’s “No Match” rule, under which the Department of Home-land Security tracked false Social Security numbers to find illegals and then required employers to dismiss them.

  In 2008, under President George W. Bush, workplace arrests totaled about 6,000 in FY 2008. But under President Obama, these arrests fell to just 900 in FY 2010.

  President Bush replaced “catch and release” with “detention and removal” after workplace raids. But President Obama has brought back “catch and release,” after which illegals just disappear. He has been conducting payroll audits instead of raids. That means illegals sometimes lose their jobs, but they don’t get deported; they just find other jobs.

  Even when we try to bring illegals to justice, we are hopelessly ineffective. About 60 percent of illegals who are not held in jail don’t show up for their hearing. About 90 percent of illegals who lose in court don’t appeal the decision—why bother when it’s so easy to just leave the area and move somewhere else in this country?

  Americans Need Jobs Too

  The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that 1.2 million illegal Mexican immigrants went home between 2006 and 2009, more than double the number who went home between 2002 and 2005.

  The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that illegal Mexican immigration in 2008-9 was one-fourth that in 2004-5.

  The number of border apprehensions, which is used to determine how many people are trying to come into the country illegally, was down 23 percent in 2008-9 compared to 2007-8.

  But as the economy improves, they’ll try to come back. That’s why we can’t wait to secure the border.

  The Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurial activity, found that in the last decade, immigrants started one-quarter of all new American high-tech companies. We should allow more foreign students receiving science degrees to stay here. As I said at the outset, the problem isn’t immigrants; it’s immigrants that we don’t choose. This is our country; we have to decide who comes here and who stays here.

  We need fewer people looking for low-skilled work and more people who not only can perform high-skilled work themselves but also will create high-skilled jobs for Americans. This is a notion that goes back to early America, when George Washington wrote in a 1794 letter to John Adams that there was no particular need to encourage immigration, “except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions.”

  California is a perfect example of what happens when we are overrun by uneducated, unskilled people who are a burden rather than an asset. In 1970, California had the seventh-most-educated workforce in this country. By 2008, with its immigrant population having tripled, California was dead last, and large numbers of U.S.-born Hispanic students remain “English language learners” through most of their school years due to insufficient academic and language skills.

  The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) issued a report in July 2010 entitled “The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers,” which found that illegal immigration costs all of us $113 billion a year, with $84.2 billion coming from state and local governments and $28.6 billion from the federal government. The largest cost is $52 billion for education. Among our states, the largest shares were borne by California at $21.8 billion, New York at $9.5 billion, and Texas at $8.9 billion. The average American household pays $1,117 per year toward the cost of illegal aliens in our country.

  If You’re Stuck in a Hole, the First Thing to Do Is to Stop Digging

  Immigration reform is not easy and will require a multipronged strategy. As a matter of public policy, it’s like the Gordian knot—you can’t untie it, and if you cut through it in one reckless stroke, you’re going to have a lot of loose ends on your hands. An estimated eleven to thirteen million illegal aliens are already living among us. But we can’t even begin to untie this knotty mess until we secure the border and stop the constant flow of illegal crossings adding to the problem. When you can’t control entry, you don’t have an immigration system; you have a free-for-all.

  There is no single, clear answer to the illegal immigration problem, but there is a single, clear first step—secure the border. Only then can true immigration reform take place.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bullies on the Playground Understand Only One Thing

  We Need a Strong Approach to Terrorism

  We all remember exactly where we were on September 11, 2001. For most of us, that day was spent glued to the TV with family or maybe coworkers as unspeakable horror unfolded. But I remember just as clearly where I was on September 11, 2002.

  On that fall morning, I stood on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol to address a group of citizens gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of 9/11 and honor those lost at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a nondescript field in rural Pennsylvania. More than anything I said that morning, I remember the looks on the faces of those who attended, for they were neither partisan politicos nor folks with an agenda—the usual crowd in the halls of state government. Instead, they were simply Americans who had come together to share in a moment of remembrance and find strength in unity.

  But I also remember how their faces changed as I told them about a guy named Richard Cyril Rescorla, better known as “Rick,” who died in the World Trade Center. If ever a man was destined to leave this earth a hero, it was Rick Rescorla. He had served in the British military before immigrating to America and joining the U.S. Army to serve in Vietnam. He fought with distinction at Ia Drang, a famously bloody battle that was chronicled in the book and film We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young. But Rick did not leave his devotion to duty on a foreign battlefield.

  As chief of security for Morgan Stanley’s offices in the World Trade Center, he spent much of his time assessing the risk terrorists might pose to those under his watch. As early as 1992, he warned authorities that the supporting pillars in the center’s basement parking garage presented a prime target for attack. A year later, you’ll recall, his warning proved all too prophetic.

  Over the next decade, Rick’s evacuation plans became the stuff of legend at Morgan Stanley. He insisted that everyone, from the stuffed-shirt executives to the messengers in bike shorts, learn and practice evacuation procedures on a regular basis. As a veteran of armed conflict he understood that a plan could be effectively executed in the confusion of battle only if it had been practiced in peace and reinforced until it became almost a matter of muscle memory. But more important, he understood the essen
tial fact: The terrorists who failed in 1993 would try again.

  So Rick Rescorla was prepared when the first plane struck on 9/11. While the rest of us watched without fully understanding at first and authorities urged everyone to remain calm and stay put, he ignored the ill-advised warnings and, according to plan, briskly led more than two thousand Morgan Stanley employees on twenty floors of Tower 2 down the stairs and out of the building to safety. He also made sure that the one thousand Morgan Stanley employees in nearby Building 5 were evacuated. Throughout the operation, Rick sang songs over his bullhorn, including “God Bless America,” the hymn of his adopted country.

  Once on the street, mission completed, most men would have called it a day. But Rick Rescorla was not like most men. He couldn’t abide the possibility that someone—one of his flock—was overlooked and still inside. After seeing that his charges on the street stayed together and moved safely away from the tower, he headed back in to climb the stairs and check for stragglers. He was never again seen alive.

  I told this story because it had moved me when I first heard it; it moves me to this day. It moved the crowd in Little Rock. But I could see on their faces a shift from a mood of mourning to something more. I said that the flames of the World Trade Center—the very flames that killed Rick Rescorla and so many others—achieved more than the terrorists could ever have anticipated. Those very flames, I went on, caused our great American melting pot to boil over. Whenever those waters have boiled over, throughout our history, they have snuffed out the flames of tyranny, hatred, and evil, even when they seemed to burn unchecked. At this point in my talk, I could see in the faces before me an obvious strength and resolve that reminded me that it is not in the DNA of Americans to live our lives as victims. We never have, and I pray that we never will. In fact, at the time I was addressing those folks in 2002, our nation was already mobilizing, ready to take the fight to the terrorists where they live.

  Right now, I don’t feel as hopeful as I did that day. I have to ask myself this question: If Rick Rescorla were here today, how could I explain to him how and why we’ve dropped the ball in the global war on terror? How would I explain to this hero—a man who not only saw imminent danger on the horizon but also devised and executed a simple yet effective survival strategy—that afterward, even with all the resources our nation can bring to bear, we have not followed suit?

  PC Is Not a Strategy

  Are we even marginally still engaged in a war on terror? In many ways, it ended when President Obama took office. Was there some final victory that I somehow didn’t hear about? No, he just changed the name of our efforts to “overseas contingency operations,” which doesn’t make sense as English, let alone as military strategy. If the man had been in the White House on June 6, 1944, we might now know D-Day as “A Day at the Beach.”

  So this is the politically correct order of the day. We’re not supposed to talk about “terror,” for one thing, and we should especially refrain from mentioning that it is radical Islamists who are coming after us. On November 10, 2009, the president spoke at the Fort Hood memorial service to honor the thirteen soldiers (and the unborn child of one of them) who had been murdered by Major Nidal Hasan as an act of jihad. Astonishingly, as if completely ignoring the motivation behind this tragedy, he never used such words as Islam or Islamist or Muslim. Does ignoring the gorilla in the room mean that he’s really not there?

  A few months later, in May 2010, Texas congressman Lamar Smith tried to get Attorney General Eric Holder to admit that a belief in radical Islam was behind Hasan’s attack, as well as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to explode a bomb in his “Under-roos” on a plane to Detroit the Christmas before and Faisal Shahzad’s fizzled bomb during rush hour in Times Square earlier that month. Here is an excerpt from the congressional hearing:

  CONGRESSMAN SMITH: Are you uncomfortable attributing any of their actions to radical Islam? It sounds like it.

  ATTARNEY GENERAL HOLDER: I don’t want to say anything negative about the religion. . . .

  SMITH: I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about radical Islam. I’m not talking about the general religion. . . .

  HOLDER: I certainly think that it’s possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact on people like Mr. Shahzad.

  This was not just a disagreement about semantics. The guys they’re talking about weren’t trying to blow things up (themselves included) because they were pyromaniacs; they were engaged in their own personal acts of jihad. We can only thank the Lord that they were so inept, because we were failed by the system we trusted to catch them before they could act on their hatred. If they’d had the skills to match that hatred, we would have suffered scores of casualties.

  The current bizarre taboo against identifying our enemy by name reminds me of our deference to the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammad. We’re so afraid of offending the people who are hellbent on wiping us out that we are now playing by their rules. The naming taboo also goes to the heart of our ability to prosecute this war, a war that Osama bin Laden declared on us in 1996 and 1998, before his attacks (or overseas contingency operations) on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, on the USS Cole in 2000, and on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001.

  As the frustrated and incredulous Congressman Smith remarked to Attorney General Holder, “I don’t know why the administration has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious. . . . If you can’t name the enemy, then you’re going to have a hard time trying to respond to them.” Exactly! This example of PC (like so many) isn’t just silly; it’s downright dangerous, and also reminiscent of our failure to recognize the seriousness of the Islamic terror threat after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Rick Rescorla, though he was nowhere near the halls of national power or the inner sanctum of the intelligence community, clearly saw the writing on the wall. He correctly inferred that this failed attack was in fact a first strike in a larger offensive. How could so many others not see that?

  The Roots of Terrorism

  Perhaps President Obama and his administration are so wary of naming the enemy because they are fundamentally unable to distinguish between the ancient religion of Islam and the radical Islam of our day—a totalitarian ideology like its predecessors in the twentieth century, communism and fascism. While traditional Islam is not my particular cup of religious tea, I can accept it generally as a historical set of beliefs that brings purpose and unity to millions of peaceful worshipers around the globe. It is clear that most followers of Islam are as revolted by terror as we are (and, in some cases, as likely to be attacked and killed).

  But radical Islam is an altogether different thing: It isn’t as much a religion as it is a psychosis. Don’t get me wrong: All religions must be vigilant against radical perversion, as Christians learned, for instance, from the medieval and Spanish inquisitions or the Salem witch trials. But to confuse the radical with the righteous in any religion, or to lump them together, is a tragic mistake. In the Obama administration’s fear of naming the obvious, it is a tactical error.

  To fight them, you have to know precisely how they think. The terrorists who scheme against us follow the ideology of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, the Karl Marx of Islamic extremism. His writings, which are the intellectual foundation of the movement, include the following tenet: “A Muslim has no nationality except his belief.” If that’s the case, the radical Islamist can have no loyalty to the United States or any other country. He is loyal only to the jihad that plots to establish an Islamist theocracy, or religion-run government, that will eventually rule a worldwide caliphate. This is a breathtaking ambition, but Qutb and his followers mean it. Political divisions are irrelevant, because lines on a map can be wiped forever away with a blood-soaked rag. This is the root explanation of why the war on terror is infinitely more complex than any prior war, in which opposing nations typically fought each other on battlefields. Terror, by contrast, happen
s at home. In almost any nation. Anywhere.

  Although Qutb was executed by President Nasser in 1966, he and his ideas have remained alive to haunt us through his followers. He has inspired terrorists from bin Laden to the radical American-born imam Anwar al-Awlaki, now in hiding in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, in turn, inspired Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and Shahzad. He has argued that “jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.” That’s a pretty clear renunciation of any claim to his citizenship, I’d think. Yet when he was added to the CIA’s list of terrorists being targeted by our drones, the New York Times denounced this move as a planned execution by the United States of “one of its own citizens far from a combat zone.” I guess they just don’t get it: Yemen is a combat zone. It is, in fact, the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln asked, “Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?” In any event, the CIA has reason to believe that al-Awlaki has gone well beyond being a wily agitator who preaches that attacking America is a “religious duty.” Evidently, he is now actively engaged in plotting with AQAP.

  Sadly, while we’ve become used to packing our Ziploc bags with miniature bottles of shampoo and taking off our shoes at airport security gates, some of us still have not intellectually grasped whom and what we are fighting. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush was only half right when he said that we have to fight them there so that we won’t have to fight them here. In a war without borders, the truth is that we have to fight them here, there, and everywhere, even if walking sock-footed through airports and having our belongings rustled about by TSA workers does less to deter terrorism than to inconvenience travelers.