NYCLifeinaFishbowl
By
Antony Chow
Today's
comic:
Commentary:
With great fanfare (and advanced leaks to the press), this Monday
night President George W. Bush proposed using 6,000 National Guard
troops to bolster patrol of the Southern border with Mexico. The
highlights of his speech are reproduced by the Associated Press.
The Guardsmen will serve in 2 week rotations. Since there are 52
weeks in a year, and each set of 6,000 troops will serve 2 weeks, that
means 26 sets of 6,000 troops, or 156,000 troops will serve border
patrol duty annually.
Pardon my ignorance, but where the heck are we going to get 156,000
troops each year to patrol the border? Guardsmen are currently
participating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Wikipedia's entry on U.S. National Guard for more information), and they played a major role in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So if we start using U.S. National Guard troops as border keepers, are
we jeopardizing our ability to deal with the next Katrina?
