Ally May Protect U.S. Skies

New York Daily News ^ | 4/03/02 | RICHARD SISK

[Rokke]

Two years of training from initial pilot training to F-16 graduation. Then however long it takes to get the new graduate mission ready in his operational squadron (3-5 months). And that's assuming there is a big pool of qualified/capable pilots waiting to start.

[fourdeuce82d]

From some of your other posts it appears you have some experience zooming about in the wild blue yonder- what's your take on this?

Can't say I'm all that worked up over it- thoughts?

[Rokke]

I'd welcome any help they can provide. I would much rather use my time and experience blowing up potential terrorists in their homes, then wait to shoot them down over mine. The Norwegians and Danes are great pilots, and more then up to the task.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I am not demeaning foreign pilots. My point is America must be strong enough militarily to defend itself.

Here are some things that don't make sense.

First, we are at war, we are told, yet WE DON'T SECURE OUR OWN BORDERS. Second, if the Norwegians are great pilots and fine allies, let THEM fly in support of our war overseas. Why are we sending OUR guys far away while bringing other foreigners here? The most important job of the Defense Department is defending our own territory, not chasing "religion-of-peace" Islamic barbarians around every third-world, hell-hole on earth.

[Rokke]

I understand your sentiments, but I think folks need to recognize that it is virtually impossible to stop terrorist attacks in this country. They struck one day using our own airliners. Who knows what they'll use tomorrow. We live in a free society, and if you took every member of our military and put them on guard within the borders of our country, you still couldn't stop one or two individuals from slipping an envelope of anthrax into the mail. Airborne CAPs might prevent an airliner from striking a major city, but what kind of strategy is that? We are ceding to the terrorists the victory of destroying one of our airliners full of hundreds of our citizens. I would rather use every military asset in our control to hit the terrorists where they come from and where they train. Kill them on their turf, not by shooting them down over ours. We can hunker down in a bunker mentality, or we can take the offensive and start kicking some ass. The Norwegians and the Danes are great pilots, but no one is better prepared to kick butt than we are.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I think folks need to recognize that it is virtually impossible to stop terrorist attacks in this country

...when we are not serious about keeping the citizens of terrorist-sponsoring nations from ever entering our country.

If the U.S. is engaged in an open-ended war against unknown terrorists, SEAL THE BORDERS! I can't take this government seriously about the war until they take our borders seriously.

This isn't rocket science. If you don't want Arab terrorists killing us on our soil, don't give visas to anybody from those countries. Who said we HAVE to give visas to any foreigners we feel might be a threat? Is a U.S. visa a birthright of every foreigner on earth?

We are in the process of making a deal with the devil we need not make. We are being asked to surrender our American rights to create a police state with all of us under constant surveillance because our government will not control the borders. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have open borders AND security without losing our American freedom to the Big Brother of a totalitarian state.

We have learned NOTHING from September 11th.

[Born on the Storm King]

We have learned NOTHING from September 11th.

I have to say I am beginning to have some serious misgivings also. To put it in simple words, "I just don't buy the story," the 911 story.

[bimbo]

"And that just tells me that you're willing to sell this nation out if only a Republican leader seals the deal." And that is the bottom line.

Other bottom lines:
1) In the current situation, America cannot defend itself.
2) Attacking Iraq is more important to the government than the defense of America.

[Rokke]

Do you honestly think we can seal our borders? Do you realize how many miles of coastline we have? Do you think it's possible to seal the entire length of our border with Canada? Do you really want to tie up all our military assets in some Maginote Line, while the terrorists that want to attack this country are free to plot and prepare where ever they want to anywhere else in the world? Whose to say the next attack doesn't come from American Muslims. Just yesterday they reported we are holding another American Taliban. How many more are there? I think if September 11 taught us anything, it is that we cannot afford to wait for the terrorists to try and hit us. We need to hit them first.

[Don Myers]

America seems unable to even protect it's own borders.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Yes, I honestly believe we can do a lot better job of protecting the borders. More than once on FR, I have posted a photo of a 30-foot-high concrete pre-fab wall which could be built the entire length of the U.S./Mexico border (2,000 miles) for about $6 billion (I've checked and run the numbers). It would use the existing techniques now used for noise abatement walls along the interstate highways in cities.

$6 billion is less than half of the airline bail-out and a tiny fraction of the damage costs of 9/11. It represents less than 24-hours of federal government spending and would be a permanent wall.

I agree it would not stop all illegal entry but it would put an enormous dent in the problem - reduce it to a manageable size. Walls and fences are practically as old as man. Drive by any factory and you will see security fences. They use them to prevent unauthorized entry and the perimeter can be watched with cameras and a few guards. It's not like walls and fences don't work. Billions are still spent on them every year, and have been for centuries, because they DO WORK!