Where Did Our Borders Go?

There seems to be some first-class confusion among the controlling powers of the U.S. concerning the precise locations of the country's borders. But that is obviously not new.

Some past Presidents have seen our home territory as extending from beyond the Arctic Circle all the way south to almost beyond Tierra del Fuego. This is the only possible explanation for why Canada has not yet been invaded and annexed. There are entirely different reasons why only part and not all of Mexico has been invaded and attached.

Right now, however, as if to guard against invasions from those parties instead, fences of different sorts are being thrown up all along the Mexican border, and there are thoughts of doing the same against our neighbors to the north.

But if those two boundaries are our true borders, and if the purpose of the National Guard and the Coast Guard is primarily to patrol and protect our borders, then why have National Guard units been sent for years already to help occupy Iraq, a country way on the other side of the globe? And, just as ridiculously, why is a Coast Guard cutter at this moment gallivanting around not out in the Atlantic far from New York and Miami, or even in the Mediterranean, which would be questionable enough, but farther still? Instead of doing its normal job of saving aquatic pleasure-seekers after various mishaps on the Chesapeake Bay and other American water places, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter is putting in appearances on none other than the Black Sea -- a huge lake with shores partly in Russia and with only one entry point, and where not a single Obama/McCain placard is to be found stuck in the sands anywhere.

Maybe, in defense of Nome and Kotzebue, Sarah Palin ordered this guardian of our coasts to be sent there. --But no. She is the governor of Alaska, not the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. But I wouldn't put that notion past those current GOPers who are so eager to pass off Ms Palin to us as the answer to all our prayers, which they are doing partly by so ludicrously pointing to her ceremonial perk of office as Commander of the Alaskan National Guard, as definite evidence of her "foreign policy experience."

For starters, does ordering Americans overseas to kill inhabitants there count as being "foreign policy experience." Much as she would like to, now that it is to her advantage to be suitably bloodthirsty instead of just the pleasant small town wife and mayor, I doubt that she has had occasion as yet to do that. As commander of the Alaskan National Guard, her job -- if that -- has been merely to okay the export of young men to the distant killing fields, where others -- and luck -- determine what happens next.