Chalk it up as another important security measure being held up by the Democratic Congress. Immediately after the terrorist bombing of New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, mine was one of many voices calling for an electronic “fence” protecting America’s security by barring the entry of terrorists and illegal interlopers both at the Canadian and Mexican borders — as well as at our seaports and airports.
I remember suggesting that the creation and installation of such an ingenious fence be proposed by the federal government to outstanding companies like Boeing and Microsoft, both of which have scores of outstanding scientists and engineers on their production staffs. Well, President Bush and his administration answered the call, and the protective fence should have been under construction by now. But wouldn’t you know it! Protests against the project and its cost from the Liberal Democrats in Congress have stalled it!
The protests are simply a continuation of the hate campaign that has echoed throughout the print and broadcast news media and in college and university circles from the day Bush won election — a hate campaign that has doubled in hatred since he was re-elected in 2004. The four large American defense companies competing for the contract to build the security fence are Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. A fifth firm vying for the contract is Ericsson, a Swedish telecommunications firm with headquarters in Plano, Texas. Collectively, the four U.S. firms represent close to 40 subsidiary firms in various fields of science and engineering.
Overseeing the massive project is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to the McClatchy Newspapers’ syndicate, DHS’s Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Secure Border Initiative Net is “the most comprehensive effort in the nation’s history to gain control of more than 6,000 miles of border with Mexico and Canada and 2,000 miles of coastline.”
Leading the caterwauling and whining of the dissident Liberals — who loudly dislike anything and everything President Bush has done or said — is Representative Henry Waxman, California Democrat, who characterized the important security initiative this way: That’s not governing. It’s utter incompetence, and it’s going to cost the taxpayers billions.”
Waxman and his fellow Democratic Liberals complained that the Secure Border Initiative Net gives industry “too much freedom to tailor U.S. border security.” It is important to note that, characteristically, Waxman and his Democratic cohorts have offered no workable plan of their own to secure the Canadian and Mexican borders.
The winner of the competition was supposed to have been announced last September. In the meantime, Secretary Chertoff and his department are laying plans to combine the electronic and engineering security fence with the expertise of the 42,000-employee Customs and Border Protection. Together, the electronic project and the ground manpower should, at last, give the U.S. the control it has been seeking against illegal immigration and the entry of terrorist agents.
At present, the cost of the total program has been estimated at $2.5 billion, but it is expected that the final figure could be close to twice that. Regardless of the Democrats’ howls of protest, it would be worth many times the final figure to keep America safe from international terrorists and the mounting numbers of illegal immigrants taking advantage of the nation’s generosity.