Honestly. This whole post 9-11 world seems ass-backwards.
Let me try to formulate these thoughts into some kind of rational and coherent essay and then you guys can tell me whether or not I'm full of toejam or not.
Fact: Before 9-11 Americans really didn't worry to much about having open, and rather porous borders. Illegal immigrant? Not really a problem.
Fact: Before 9-11 Americans really didn't worry to much about terrorists in general, or terrorists that hate American in particular.
Fact: There really, honestly, isn't any country in the world that poses a threat to the U.S. militarily. You could make a case for China, but as far as I know they don't have I.C.B.M.'s and they don't have much of a Navy- so a billion screaming Chinese aren't going to come invade America any time soon.
Fact: The only REAL threat is that of a small cell of terrorists infiltrating into a city with some sort of NBC weapon, and causing a huge amount of casualties and damage.
Fact: (I think) One consequence of invading Iraq (and or North Korea) will be to alienate the rest of the world even MORE towards America- isolating the U.S. diplomatically and possibly economically.
So, to sum up, the only REAL threat as I see it is that a small group of terrorists could in fact aquire NBC weapons- most likely from a rogue state such as North Korea, Iraq, or possibly Russia (either by theft or simply buying it on the 'black market'). I can see two ways to deal with the threat. The first way is to invade Iraq and or North Korea and secure their weapons, and maintain a sizable occupation army for an indefinate amount of time (which will likely get unpopular very quickly globally, and slightly less quickly domestically), perhaps setting up a puppet government that is friendly to the U.S. Of course, this will have some consequences, such as an increased chance of terrorism abroad and at home (people pissed off because American troops killed their dear old grandma, etc., not to mention 'Arab solidarity' in the case of Iraq), and possibly a spreading war (in the case of North Korea, and possibly Iraq but I doubt it).
Or, the United States could simply secure its borders. No more open borders along the Canadian and Mexican borders. Build a fence, or a wall, or whatever, station guards there with checkpoints at every road, sensors covering the rest of the border with patrols and helicopters patrolling the borders. Increase security at airports at home, and especially flights in foreign countries coming TO America. Same with ships- increase security in ports with ships headed to America, increase Coast Guard patrols along the coast.
In other words, make it very very hard for a group of terrorists to bring a weapon of any kind into the country. Hell, you could even make a nice list of suspected terrorists that couldn't GET into the country. You wouldn't have to arrest them or shoot them or anything, just turn them away. Don't even let them get on the plane, or the boat, or whatever.
Wouldn't it be easier to nuetralize the delivery system rather than to try to nuetralize the weapons themselves?
Anyway, just kind of wanted to share that with you guys, maybe get some opinions.
