Thursday, November 29, 2007
By JAMES P. PINKERTON
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
A “virtual fence” to defend our border with Mexico? You know, detectors and sensors and cameras and the like, but not a physical barrier?
That’s the considered policy position of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, which he shares with such homeland security experts as Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security. All of them support a virtual fence — because any fool can see that walls don’t work.
Bricks, concrete, barbed wire, all that: overrated! We don’t need physical boundaries between us, only virtual boundaries. That’s why we’d never put up a real fence, for instance, if we wanted to keep our children or pets from wandering away.
So why should our government do any differently? Why clutter up the border vista — it’s a great view, from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo, and vice versa — with some big ugly wall?
Maybe you think I’m kidding. But don’t take my word for it: Here’s Giuliani, quoted in an Associated Press story from last week, headlined, “Giuliani promotes virtual fence.” Explains the former mayor, “Frankly, the virtual fence is more valuable, because it alerts you to people approaching the border, it alerts you to people coming over the border.”
That sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it? After all, you use a virtual lock on your front door, right? That way, when intruders approach your house, you can spot them. And when they walk in, well, a police SWAT team is on the way. The key to this enforcement strategy, to be sure, is to respond after the crime has occurred. So it’s strange, therefore, that Giuliani insists that he wants to build at least some physical wall.
Because virtuality works better, Giuliani assures us. After all, that’s why we have virtual prison walls and jail cells, right? You see, when the bad guys escape, an alarm goes off, satellites up in space look down, and helicopters fly over and scoop them up. And if the inmates try it again, well, we just repeat the apprehending process till they cry uncle.
Terrorists
So that’s the plan for fending off terrorists from around the world — not to mention any of the 500 million South and Central Americans who might wish to come to this country illegally. We’ll spot ’em and nab ’em before they get to Des Moines.
Some see weaknesses in this virtual approach. A headline in The Washington Post from Sept. 21, 2006, declared: “Plenty of Holes Seen in a ‘Virtual Fence’/Border Sensors Not Enough, Experts Say.” And this headline from the AP on Sept. 20 of this year: “Glitch renders ‘virtual fence’ unworkable.” But President Giuliani can fix any technical challenge. After all, as mayor, he solved the problem of radio interoperability between the police and fire departments long before disaster struck on Sept. 11, 2001.
I like this idea of “virtuality,” as opposed to “reality.” So here’s another modest proposal: Let’s have a virtual border patrol. I mean, sending out actual law enforcers to interdict unknown persons coming across the border — that’s a formula for trouble.
But with the virtual border patrol, we won’t have any repeats of the violence that occurred Feb. 17, 2005, when two all-too-real border patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, shot and wounded a suspected drug smuggler as he was fleeing from them.
Conviction
Ramos and Compean were convicted of unjustly shooting Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila. So the two border patrolmen received long prison sentences, which they are now serving, while Aldrete-Davila went free.
So you see where I’m headed: If Ramos and Compean had been virtualized, then poor Osvaldo would never have been shot. Guns? We don’t need no stinkin’ guns — or walls.
Instead, let’s have all-virtual law enforcement, all the time. Too bad Giuliani didn’t think of this idea when he was mayor. If he had, he could really have cut crime in New York City.
X Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday.