Perhaps Spank That Donkey didn’t notice that the Cold War ended

Spank That Donkey is paying more attention to Bob Marshall these days, and thus keeping my busy.  STD’s newest objection to Marshall’s candidacy is his policy to move troops currently deployed in Germany to the border with Mexico.

STD raises two objections; the first is with pulling the troops out of Germany:

The bases we maintain in Germany are vital for our strategy of ‘Forward Defense’ that was utilized to win the Cold War, and keep the peace in Europe.  Stripping those bases of personnel is foolhardy, as those bases, and our personnel were attacked by Left Wing Terrorist Cells during the Cold War.  Furthermore, those bases have played a vital role in the War on Terror, and specifically for staging the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, if we were still fighting the Cold War, STD would have a point.  However, the Cold War ended more than sixteen years ago.  More to the point, Germany is no longer a front-line state in the NATO alliance.  Those honors, if you will, go to Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

At present, we already have deals in place to station troops in Romania and Bulgaria (Stars and Stripes), which will not only do more for Forward Defense than any one stationed in Germany, but it will also be a better staging area for any future deployments to Central Asia and the Middle East.  Meanwhile, we are planning to modernize Poland’s military (Times of India).  While Germany is certainly an important ally, a military presence there is simply not as vital today as it was during the Cold War.

The border is another story, not that STD has noticed:

The Southern Border of the USA can be secured with fencing and border patrols, it’s complete overkill to place M-1 Tanks and AH-1 Attack Helicopters on our southern border just to deter illegal immigration. 

Perhaps STD has’t been paying attention, but we’re not talking about a wave of random would-be workers.  The Border Patrol faces drug smugglers and people smugglers, both of which have the means and the opportunity to kill.

Allow me to direct you to the opening four paragraphs of Jerry Seper’s Washington Times piece on the subject from last November (titled “Lawmen Under Siege”):

Alien and drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border have spawned a rise in violence against federal, state and local law-enforcement authorities, who say they are outmanned and outgunned.

“They’ve got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems, spotters and can react faster than we are able to,” said Shawn P. Moran, a 10-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego.

“And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles,” he said. “There are so many agent ‘rockings’ that few are even reported anymore. If we wrote them all up, that’s all we would be doing.”

Assaults against Border Patrol agents have more than doubled over the past two years, many by Mexico-based alien and drug gangs more inclined than ever to use violence as a means of ensuring success in the smuggling of people and contraband.

Up against all of that, I’d hardly consider the M1 tanks and AH1 helicopters “overkill.”

Besides, while STD may not pay much attention to the border, al-Qaeda has (Seper again):

A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States — including a stronghold in the Washington area — in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said.

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador’s notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States.

“Mara Salvatrucha” is also known as MS-13, one of the most violent criminal gangs in America.  If STD hasn’t heard of them, he needs to get out more.

The fact is, we face a far greater threat on that border than we do in Germany right now – especially since Germany hasn’t been a front-line state in nearly a decade (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined the alliance in 1999).  If Gilmore has a viewpoint even remotely as myopic as STD does, then Marshall towers above him on the security issue.