alpha mike fox: US Politics

Showing posts with label US Politics. Show all posts

Herman Cain’s campaign overshadowed by allegations of impropriety

Herman Cain, Republican presidential candidate and former businessman, CEO and radio show host, is facing yet another charge of impropriety, this time from an Atlanta businesswoman who claimed she had a 13-year affair with the former pizza company chief executive. The woman, Ginger White, said that she had been aware at the time Mr. Cain was married and that their relationship was “inappropriate.”

Ms. White said Mr. Cain ended sexual relations with her eight months ago, when he began his run for the Republican nomination.

According to reports, Ms. White produced mobile phone bills showing what she said was Cain’s number. She said he had called her dozens of times over a period of several months. According to her, she decided to go public with her allegations after receiving calls from journalists, and she was bothered by the way Mr. Cain had “demonised” other women who had accused him of sexual harassment.

This surely must end what has been, until lately, an entertaining political campaign. According to Robert Costa at the National Review, “Herman Cain told his senior staff that he is ‘reassessing’ whether to remain in the race. He will make his final decision ‘over the next several days’.”

Mr. Cain is reported to have denied the “charges unequivocally.” He said, he had known “this lady” for “a number of years.” And that he’d “been attempting to help her financially because she was out of work and destitute, desperate.”

I believe, sadly, this candidate’s time in the sun is at an end. Even in these everything-goes days, marriage fidelity is expected, demanded, of a man who aspires to be the president.

GOP debate: no leader emerges to challenge Mitt

The Republican candidates’ debate hosted by CNN, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute Tuesday night was all about foreign policy and national security, and what each of the eight GOP nomination candidates would do differently should he/she win the White House. I thought CNN’s anchor Wolf Blitzer did a good job of keeping candidates on topic and of allowing all to have their say.

I noticed three flubs of a minor nature. The only one that seemed to get any notice was Herman Cain calling Wolf Blitzer, “Blitz” instead of “Wolf”. Two others, though, were interesting from a Canadian point of view.

First there was Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator, calling Africa a “country.” A minor slip perhaps, but it speaks volumes about how American politicians see the world. Also seemingly unnoticed was Rep. Michele Bachmann’s reference to the United States achieving “oil independence” if the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline had been allowed to proceed. Keystone XL is being built be a Canadian firm to transport Canadian-sourced oil. How can that contribute to the U.S.’s “oil independence?” But I quibble.

Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor and former ambassador to China, seemed in his element in this debate that focused heavily on foreign policy. His performance was the best of the night, followed closely by Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. By contrast, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and businessman Herman Cain did not impress.

Newt Gingrich showed political courage by sensibly calling for a limited amnesty for long-time illegal immigrants. Amnesty, of course, is not at all popular with many in the Republican base. The former House Speaker said:

I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families which have been here a quarter century. And I am prepared to take the heat for saying let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship, but finding a way to give them legality so as not to separate them from their families.

This was one of the few times I have seen glimpses of statesmanship in this crop of presidential hopefuls.

Jon Huntsman also showed us he has the making of a statesman, at least, when it comes to foreign affairs. He’s arguing for drastic cuts in U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, even though it may be contrary to the advice of military advisers. His assessment of the Afghan scene seems the most dogma-free and realistic. He called for “an honest conversation in this [U.S.] country about the sacrifices that have been made over nearly 10 years.” He explained:

We need a presence on the ground that is more akin to 10,000 or 15,000. That will serve our interests in terms of intelligence gathering and special forces response capability. And we need to prepare for a world, not just in South Asia, but, indeed, in every corner of the world in which counter-terrorism is going to be in front of us for as far as the eye can see into the 21st century.

Michele Bachmann was at her best with perhaps the sagest advice of the night when she warned about the instability of Pakistan’s nuclear sites:

They also are one of the most violent, unstable nations that there is. We have to recognize that 15 of the sites, nuclear sites are available or are potentially penetrable by jihadists. Pakistan is a nation, that it’s kind of like ‘too nuclear to fail.’

“Too nuclear to fail,” I like that line a lot. But slogans, regardless of how true they are, are not of themselves, statesmanship. This was probably Bachmann’s best debate in quite awhile, but I’m far from being sold on her ending up in the White House.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum did well enough, I guess, but I just can’t see him in the role of the leader of the free world—not sufficient gravitas.

I agree with Michele Bachmann, who said Rick Perry’s position on the more than $1-billion U.S. aid sent to Pakistan is “highly naïve.” She disagrees with the Texas governor who sees aid to Pakistan as a blank cheque without any return on the U.S.’s investment. Perry is far too parochial for my liking. His jingoism—he wants the U.S. to consider unilaterally applying a no-fly zone over Syria (an overt act of war), for example—may excite the very right of the Republican base, but lacks depth and nuance. I like to see a more sophisticated approach to foreign policy from a presidential candidate.

Businessman and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain missed a golden opportunity to show he had the necessary grasp on foreign affairs. He sounded like he was reading from seminar notes when he chose phrases like, “number one, secure the border for real” and “I would first make sure that they had a credible plan for success, clarity of mission and clarity of success.” His answers sounded pedantic rather than astute.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has his supporters and likely did not disappoint them. His appeal to a broader segment of the American public probably took a hit, though, when he called humanitarian aid to fight disease in Africa “worthless.” I know his comment was prompted by a belief widely shared that foreign aid money gets syphoned off by foreign despots before it reaches the people who need it. There are countless examples, however, of aid to prevent disease being effective—saving millions of lives. Certainly foreign aid should be more effective—there’s plenty of room for improvement there—but it’s hardly worthless.

So there you have the candidates not named “Mitt.”

As to Mitt Romney himself, I thought he had a mediocre performance. But this man has been running for president for five years and he has learned a great deal. None did a better job of turning questions about foreign policy into answers about domestic issues. And Romney shows best when his positions are matched against those of President Obama. For that reason alone, the former governor of Massachusetts held his own.

So, the GOP race continues to be between Mitt Romney and the best of the rest.

© Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.

The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.

Politico Playback …smile

When the going gets tough, Obama punts

The Obama administration’s postponement of its decision on whether or not to allow the extension of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline until after the 2012 presidential election provides opportunities for Canada to explore options that may, in the long run, be favourable to our country.

With presidential elections less than a year away, Canada-U.S. relations are pretty well on hold leaving little if any probability for Canada influencing the timing of a decision. Even following the election, there is no certainty a democratic administration will ever OK the pipeline project and face the wrath of its influential constituency among environmentalists.

Given the situation, Canada will do well to consider alternatives to TransCanada Corp.’s pipeline extensions that would have seen crude oil from the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta piped to Cushing, Oklahoma and from there all the way to Port Arthur and Houston, Texas. For a start, there is an option to take oil from Alberta to the Pacific coast and shipping it to Asia and especially China, which is hungry for oil and will probably welcome a way to lessen its dependency on oil from the Middle East.

A West Coast option, though, could face similar difficulties to that which sidelined Keystone in the U.S., since any new pipelines required in British Columbia are likely to be threatened by protests from environmentalists and legal challenges from first nations groups.

So perhaps we need to look also to domestic markets in Ontario and Quebec for a place to sell our western oil. There seems to be an market there for upwards of one million barrels a day that are imported currently from overseas—though I’m not sure if eastern refineries are currently capable of handling the unusually thick crude from the oil sands. I have read that it is technically feasible to convert one of two natural gas pipelines to eastern Canada to carry oil. Such a decision would reduce or eliminate those provinces’ reliance on foreign crude.

Getting oil to Ontario and Quebec, or to the West Coast, will likely require expanding existing pipelines and building new domestic infrastructure projects, resulting in huge investment and job opportunities that will benefit Canadians for decades. This could be an enormous boon to Canada, so maybe the Americans are really doing us a favour.

One of the most promising options Canada has is to ship oil by rail. According to the New York Times:

Last October, in a joint venture with the Canadian National Railway of Montreal, Altex Energy, an oil shipping company, began shipping relatively small amounts of tar sands [sic] crude along Canadian National’s tracks directly to the Gulf of Mexico.

Although it costs more to ship by rail than by pipeline, rail would avoid billions of dollars in infrastructure investment and any of the expensive and time-consuming regulatory reviews in the United States and here in Canada. Pipelines also require crude from the oil sands to be diluted with chemicals to thin it and allow it to flow more easily. Railcars do not.

Regardless of what a future president of the United States may decide, be rest assured that—as Ronald Liepert, the MLA for Calgary-West and former Alberta energy minister, said—“this commodity [Alberta crude] will go someplace.” If the U.S. decides not to take what some there like to call our “dirty oil,” Eastern Canada and China will take every drop of oil Alberta and Saskatchewan can produce.

Rick Perry says he’ll “Cut, Balance and Grow”

Republican candidate for the 2012 U.S. presidential nomination, Gov. Rick Perry today promises to “unleash job creation, address the current economic crisis, while at the same time generating a stable source of revenue to address our record deficit and put our fiscal house in order.”

The governor of Texas made the pledge while rolling out a broad economic plan, which he’s dubbed, “Cut, Balance and Grow.” It’s built around the option for Americans to pay a flat 20 per cent income tax rate, and is considered to be a critical element of his strategy to regain front-runner status for his struggling campaign, and to answer the threat of Herman Cain’s proposed “9-9-9 plan.”

Mr. Perry’s proposed flat tax would preserve key tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 a year and would increase the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals, while also eliminating tax paid on the country’s largest estates upon the death of the properties’ owners.

The governor would eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits and allow young workers to invest part of their payroll taxes into private accounts. He also called for corporate tax reform, including a one-time reduced tax rate of 5.25 percent for businesses that bring home their profits that are “parked” overseas.

Gov. Perry said:

The flat tax will unleash growth but growth's not enough. We must put a stop to this entitlement culture that risks the financial solvency of this country for future generations. I mean the red flags are alarming.

[…]

The U.S. Chamber [of Commerce] estimates this one-time tax reduction would bring more than $1 trillion in capital back to the U.S. create up to 2.9 million jobs, and increase economic output by $360 billion.

As expected, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has already launched its counterattack, saying Gov. Perry’s tax plan seems guided by the principle of shifting the tax burden from large corporations “onto the backs of the middle class.” No surprise there.

Flat-tax seems to be the flavour of the month among Republicans. We’ll have to wait to see how this latest effort stands up to the barrage of criticism it’s sure to receive in the coming days.

Will Obama’s declaration that America’s war in Iraq will end in 2011 help his re-election prospects?

During his run for president of the United States, Barack Obama pledged “to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end.” Friday, the president confirmed his promise with an announcement that he will pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. This fulfills one of the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SFA) with Iraq.

Over 4,400 American military lives have been lost since the Iraq war started in 2003, and the war has already cost the Americans over $806-billion.

According to the Huffington Post, there were reports the administration was looking for ways to renegotiate the SFA with the Iraqi government so as to prolong U.S. presence in that country. Such reports were troubling to many who had supported the Democrats in 2008—at least in part—because of Obama’s pledge to end the war.

Apparently, Americans and the Iraqis wanted to keep up to about 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the Dec. 31 deadline, despite their public protestations to the contrary. Negotiations were prompted by: (a) the Iraqis’ hope for more help in providing internal stability; and (b) the Americans’ fear of further encroachment by Iran. But the Iraq government faced opposition to the idea from Shia groups and Iraqi nationalists, and discussions over the precise number of and legal immunity for troops that would stay behind were stumbling blocks in the negotiations.

Of the 41,000 troops the Americans now have stationed in Iraq, only 4,000 to 5,000 security contractors will remain in the country after Dec. 31. This would end an occupation that, at its height in 2006, saw some 170,000 U.S. soldiers in that country.

The cost in American lives and treasure has been high, with over 4,400 American military lives having been lost since the war started in March, 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush launched the U.S.’s “Shock And Awe” invasion of Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have also been killed. And, according to a study by Amy Belasco, Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget, released last March, the war had already cost the Americans $806-billion.

Many pundits are convinced President Obama would not have been elected president had it not been for the Iraq War. His victory in the presidential primary elections was owed in no small part to support from his party’s antiwar wing—Hillary Clinton had become tainted by her vote for the invasion and he campaigned to bring the troops home. Now the debate will be over whether the president’s announcement will help him in next year’s election.

The Iraq promise kept and recent foreign policy victories—bin Laden’s and Gaddafi’s deaths—will no doubt play a role in the 2012 election; however, with the American economy in such poor shape and without much hope it will improve over the next 12 months, voters are likely to remember Bill Clinton’s now famous phrase, “It’s the economy stupid,” which seemed to resonate so well with them during his successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H. W. Bush.

I agree with Glen Bolger—a Republican pollster whose firm is working for former governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign—who said, “The election is much more about Americans losing their jobs than about Gaddafi losing his head.” And I’d say much the same about the president’s latest Iraq announcement.

Bring on the flat tax!

Republican presidential candidates, businessman Herman Cain and
Gov. Rick Perry | Photo: Justin Sullivan/GettyImages

[This entry was published previously on Postmedia Network’s The Real Agenda blog.]

The 9-9-9 tax plan being proposed by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is beginning to take heavy fire from other presidential hopefuls and analysts alike. Some claim Mr. Cain’s plan would shift the tax burden in the United States, raising taxes on the poor while cutting taxes for the rich—hardly the narrative Mr. Cain wants to hear.

The 9-9-9 tax plan has resonated with Republicans and has helped propel the former Godfathers pizza CEO onto the top rung of leading contenders for the Republican nomination. His quick rise in polls, though, has meant Mr. Cain’s plan is receiving more scrutiny.

Mr. Cain would replace the current federal tax code in its entirety with a flat 9% personal income tax, a 9% corporate income tax, and a 9% tax on sales of new products. He would also eliminate the payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, along with estate and capital gains taxes. And, in a second phase, Mr. Cain would eliminate all federal income taxes for individuals and for corporations and replace them with a national sales tax—Herman Cain, however, hasn’t yet offered an estimate of the sales tax rate that would be necessary to raise sufficient money to fund the federal government.

I spent years as an accountant with responsibility for a corporation’s taxes and remember well the bookcase full of material I referred to daily. Like that of the United States, the Canadian tax structure is bewildering in its complexity. And, while Mr. Cain’s campaign hasn’t offered nearly enough specifics for anyone to do a thorough analysis of his 9-9-9 plan, I welcome the fact that the idea of a simple flat tax is now on the table for open debate.

I am encouraged also by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas saying recently that he too will propose a flat tax as part of a tax overhaul program.

According to The New York Times, “He [Perry] has in the past suggested support for some form of a flat tax, but has backed off from endorsing one. Mr. Perry recently recruited as an adviser Steve Forbes, who ran for president in 1996 on a pledge of implementing a single flat tax on income, without any deductions.”

On Wednesday past, Gov. Perry gave us the broad outlines of his tax plan that he said will feature spending cuts, entitlement reform and a flat tax. And he promised then to provide specifics in six days.

Should a flat tax be successful in the United States, we could expect to see one here in Canada within a decade. Imagine: no need for a tax accountant or expensive tax software, no complicated forms, few itemized list of deductions, credits or other “loopholes”. And no estate tax, no capital gains tax and no dividends tax.

I can hardly wait.

Except photograph, © Russell G. Campbell, 2011.

The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.

Isn’t Canada’s Occupy Movement just a sham and a shameless display of hypocrisy?

[This entry was also published by Postmedia Network Canada.com’s The Real Agenda blog under the title, Occupy Wall Street in Canada: The smell of hypocrisy.]

I’ve been following the Occupy movement for the past month and am no closer to an understanding of what is really behind the spread to Canadian shores of this global expression of outrage at bankers in particular and corporate greed and social inequality in general.

In just four weeks, the movement has spread from a relatively small demonstration—1,000 people or so—on New York’s Wall Street to tens of thousands spread over 900 cities around the world. While there are some common threads tying these groups together, they appear to be, at best, only loosely affiliated, with the exact targets of the demonstrations differing depending on the city and the country in which the protests are held. Each movement seems to have its own local flavour.

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has said the global financial crisis was the trigger. “What you are seeing all around the world, starting from Wall Street, people are showing their frustrations,” he said. But how real/justified are the frustrations of the protestors, which seem to be growing into wave of global anger at perceived social and economic injustice?

In the United States, Europe and South American countries like Chile, I believe the movement will have a measurable impact.

In the United States, where they are just over a year away from presidential and Congressional elections, politicians will ignore such a wide-spread movement at their re-election peril—though some will find it hard to get behind protestors who are showing a nasty tendency toward anti-Israel, anti-Jewish sentiment. Clever politicians will mine the speeches and slogans to find the “calls to action” they can use in their upcoming campaigns, just as Barack Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest adopted the protesters’ “the 99%” terminology when he said, “The president will continue to acknowledge the frustration that he himself shares about the need for Washington to do more to support our economic recovery and to ensure that the interest of the 99% of Americans is well-represented.” And, if the Democrats retain the White House and win back the House of Representatives, expect more regulation of banks and corporations in general.

In Europe the situation is more dire. There, as in Israel and Chile, the Occupy Movement seems to owe more of its inspiration to the Arab Spring. Spain’s “indignados”, for example, begun camping out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square in May, and at least 200,000 people turned out on the streets for last Saturday’s round of protests. The Spanish flavour of the movement is targeting the November general election when it could help defeat the socialist party of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

While the Israelis targeted housing, the high cost of living and need for “social justice”, in Greece, there was a backlash against austerity measures being imposed. What Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary of Greece’s civil-servants’ union called, “heartless economic policies.” In Greece, we have seen the most focused public anger, with strikes, work stoppages and sit-ins as well as a two-day general walk-out. And, I fear, the worst is yet to come. The country is flat broke and other European countries with more frugal and industrious populations are the ones bailing them out—yet Greek civil-servants riot in their streets.

As far as Canada is concerned, the movement, so far, has been underwhelming. The backing of major unions is, though, cause for concern. It is curious indeed that a movement that claims to represent 99% of Canada’s population should be so strongly supported by powerful and wealthy public sector unions, which represent workers who are a privileged segment of our population that has actually grown in size and, in some cases, pay-cheque since the global financial crisis triggered the recent recession with which the whole world grapples.

Rather than being part of the 99%, the several hundred-thousand Canadian public sector employees and their union representatives make up their own privileged “per cent.” They are recession proof, lay-off proof and have fat pay-cheques and generous sick-leave, vacation and pension plans. These folks are no more part of the 99% than are our politicians, the top echelons of the banks and other large corporations. Do they join these protest groups because they hope we won’t notice how well-off they are compared to their fellow Canadians? They sure have nothing in common with the needy, the jobless and the victims of social injustice.

As far as I’m concerned, there are many people in many countries who can be characterized as victims of the social order; but not so much in Canada. And, for the most part, the Occupy Movement here is a sham and a shameless display of hypocrisy.

The Dragon had a tooth or two pulled by CBC ombudsman

The CBC’s ombudsman, Kirk LaPointe, says Kevin O’Leary’s remarks during an interview with author Chris Hedges violated the public broadcaster’s journalistic standards. The ruling followed complaints filed after O’Leary called the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist “a left-wing nutbar” during CBC News Network’s The Lang & O’Leary Exchange on Oct. 6.

Ombudsman LaPointe says e-mailed complaints and comments—many of them demanding an apology and some demanding O’Leary be fired—began arriving the evening the program aired and continued for several days, while video (see below) of the exchange was posted online.

You’d think O’Leary could get through a short interview without resorting to personal insults, wouldn’t you? His attitude here and as an outspoken judge on CBC’s Dragons’ Den reminds me a lot of Don Cherry’s rants on CBC’s hockey broadcasts.

Fellows like these, once they become popular, seem to see themselves as gurus who have the last word on their areas of expertise. Both have been a success in their areas and seem to believe it gives them special license to always be right. At least, in the case of O’Leary, he is most often right except, perhaps, sometimes when he’s showing off.

Except video, © Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.

The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.

I’ll not shed a tear over Anwar al-Awlaki loss of his Fifth Amendment right to due process

When American citizens take up arms against their country, they apparently cease to receive the judicial protections normally accorded citizens of that democracy. As aptly put in today’s National Post’s editorial, “Citizenship is not an immunity card against reprisal for those who commit acts of war, or assist others in so doing, against their governments.”

We are, of course, referring to the recent killing in Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki (pictured), the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, by missile fire from a drone believed to be operated by the CIA.

Many of us applauded when President Obama announced that U.S. clandestine forces had assassinated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. But some see this as being different because al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico; he was not a foreign national like bin Laden. And they believe he deserved to be treated like any other American citizen, that is, he had a Fifth Amendment right to due process.

According to a report in The Washington Post, his assignation had been sanctioned by a secret memorandum written by the U.S. Justice Department. The memorandum came after a review by senior administration lawyers, who considered the legal issues raised by the extra-judicial targeting of a U.S. citizen. There was a general consensus, apparently, regarding the legality of al-Awlaki’s killing.

Some Americans already believe too many of their countrymen too easily allow their rights to be sacrificed on the alter of national security and offer too little protest when extra-judicial actions are taken by the state where al-Qaeda and Islamist Extremist terrorism are concerned. How must they be feeling now that they’ve reached the point where a president can order the pre-emptive killing of U.S. citizens overseas as a counterterrorism measure?

This fact, I suppose, should give us all a sense of discomfort, especially when rapists and pedophiles of the worst kind along with serial killers have their constitutional rights protected at great expense and with great danger to law enforcement officers, yet traitors can apparently be executed by presidential edict.

But should I care? Is this a real injustice?

Notwithstanding my sense of unease at the foregoing, I acknowledge we are living with a world order that does not fit easily with many of our traditional legal norms. Our battlefields are not always the traditional ones we once knew, such as those in the Second World War or even those in Iraq or Afghanistan where the enemy seldom wore military uniforms and often passed off themselves as innocent civilians.

Anwar al-Awlaki was an enemy of the United States in every respect. He was a senior leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. He has been connected to three recent attacks against the United States. U.S. officials say his e-mails inspired accused Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Hasan. al-Awlaki helped plan the failed Underwear Bomb attack, and was part of the plot to bring down cargo planes with explosives inside computer printers.

The current war we wage against al-Qaeda, and Islamist Extremist terrorism in general, is more alike a “hot” version of the Cold War between the West and the communist world. Our enemies don’t were uniforms and have co-opted many of our own citizens and are using them against us.

Every nation has a right of self-defence, a right well established under international law. And it is prudent for us to provide our government officials and armed forces the protection of a legal umbrella under which they can execute appropriate responses to this imminent danger in which we who live in Western democracies find ourselves.

When citizens take up arms against their country and/or its allies, they should be deemed to have denounced their citizenship and all the rights and privileges that go with it. So I’ll not shed a tear over Anwar al-Awlaki loss of his Fifth Amendment right to due process. We still have a firm hold on the moral high-ground in our war with Islamist Extremist terrorism.

Will Americans ever trust us again?

The Americans are again musing about building a fence along parts of our mutual border as well as deploying various high-tech surveillance systems. Apparently, some officials in the American Customs and Border Protection Agency believe this will make America safer from terrorism. They’ll never ever forget Ahmed Ressam—who they arrested in 2000, trying to cross into Washington State from British Columbia on a mission to bomb Los Angeles International Airport—and there are Americans who still believe mistakenly some of the 9/11 plane hijackers entered the United States from Canada.

Americans have every right to do so, of course, they can build walls, fences, ditches, moats to their hearts’ content. But one can’t help wondering if this isn’t just another symptom of their apparent helplessness, making them feel that they have to do something. So they believe sealing themselves in—when a far more imminent threat seems to be coming from within the United States itself—will help keep them more secure.

Today, there’s a New York Times report that a U.S. drone attack killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim preacher, this morning in Yemen. al-Awlaki was a leading figure in Al Qaeda in Yemen, and was known to have immense influence within that terrorist group.

Other recent threats-from-within have been well publicized:

A 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus, a graduate of Northeastern University no less, has been charged with planning terrorist attacks against key buildings in Washington. He allegedly planned to attack the buildings with explosives on model airplanes, and to cut down evacuees with gunfire and grenades as they left the buildings.
U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud tried Last Christmas to blow up a truck bomb while Portland, Oregon’s Pioneer Courthouse Square was packed with thousands of people.
U.S. citizens, Major Nidal Malik Hasan and Private Naser Abdo, both of the United States Army, planned attacks on Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan killing 13 and wounding 30. Abdo, fortunately, was arrested before he could act.

Thank the Lord none of these maniacs were Canadians—we’d never have heard the end of it and wait times at the U.S.-Canadian border would have become unbearable. And, at least, one U.S. Congressman would have called for an all-out invasion of our country.

The Americans have enormous internal security problems and have nothing short of a real war in progress on their southern border—tens of thousands of casualties have already been suffered—yet some have time to plan a fence between themselves and Canada.

Go figure.